The Saga of the Gear and modified Note 3 software topic

I had my Note 3 long before I picked up my Gear, and as with all things, I made some adjustments to my Note 3 software experience to improve it for my use. This has had some undesirable effects on the Gear and I just want to list out what I have done and what effects it had on my Gear for awareness so those of you who plan to make changes to your Note will know what you're getting into.

I have made the following changes to my Note 3:

1. Rooted


2. Frozen all Knox apps/services


3. Frozen some other misc bloat


4. Nova Launcher set as default Launcher


5. S for Switch Voice installed (overrides S Voice with Google Now and gives you a Moto X - like Touchless control)


6. Dynamic notifications set as default lock screen


7. Adway blocking ads


8. Samsung TTS frozen (to fix the Accessibility bug for Pebble)

I usually don't modify my devices too heavily, but I really felt like my Note needed some of this and some features (such as Dynamic Notifications and S for Switch Voice) give me a Moto X type experience that I miss when using the Note. Below are the effects I have noticed this having on my Gear:

• No voice feedback for S Voice on Gear (probably due to S for Switch Voice or Samsung TTS being disabled)


• Notifications delay - Because of Dynamic Notifications, if my phone is face up out of my pocket, my watch will not receive a notification until the screen turns off. This is because the display is effectively on. This isn't a huge issue because if my phone is face up and I can see it, I'm not going to read the notification on my watch anyway. Most of the time, it's when it's in my pocket that I need the Gear to step in and in those cases, the notifications are instantaneous.


• Occasional network errors when using S Voice - May be due to adblock (which I will not give up).

This is all I have really noticed so far. I will update this post if I discover anything else. I hope this helps anyone considering getting a gear and/or making any of these modifications on their Note 3. Happy Gearing.