Hi All,
I didn’t find any informative topic in techlore forum searches so writing this.
I want to know the how the amazefit watches and gadgetbridge is working if anyone has tried it before. Does it provide the privacy and security and features to an acceptable limit?
They work pretty well with Gadgetbridge. I was previously rocking the Amazfit Bip which paired without any issue or external tool. I have since switched to the Amazfit Band 5 which unfortunately requires a special key to pair. The website gives you a good guide on how to do so, but it helps if you have some Python knowledge. The utility they point you to to get the paring key is a python script.
If you don’t feel comfortable with that, I recommend using one of the devices without the [!] on their supported device list. The only devices in the Amazfit line which don’t require the pairing key is the Bip, Cor, and Cor 2 as of writing this.
In terms of privacy and security, Gadgetbridge allows you to use and get data from these devices without having them connect to the internet. All the data stay on the phone with the exception of any of the integrations you add. For example, they can get data from certain weather apps and send that data to the watch if you want that feature.
If you are looking to buy, I highly recommend asteroid os supported watch.
I use it, pretty satisfied.
Though a little CLI comfort is needed, to flash the image.
You can see the steps here:
It very much depends on what your use case is for a wrist device. For me I am more interested in the fitness and sleep tracking. Asteroid OS does not provide that as of writing. I also like that I only charge my device ~1/week even with exercise tracking. In particular, my Bip would last for almost a month. I only switched to the Band 5 for something smaller and more comforable when sleeping.
I find AsteroidOs cool and ambitious, but that also makes it harder to incrementally adopt. It’s essentially a new OS layer on top of the WearOS kernel. That means they have to reimplement all of the features that people would want from the original device like handling calls, health tracking, and other device native features. Not to mention that the devices are bigger and have shorter batter life than the Amazfit devices @aarckstone asked about.
Whereas Gadgetbridge is just an API interposer to make a non-private wearable private by only storing data locally.
Thanks Victor, I really wanted to know that which are the Amazfit watches that doesn’t require pairing up.
I chose gadget bridge because:
Bangle Js 2 - can’t import in my country
PineTime - not enough capability
Asteroid OS - too expensive for the stuff they offer as of now.
So Gadgetbridge is my go to decision. But I saw that all watches require pairing up. So I have two options either do pairing up like mentioned in website or buy the one that doesnt require pairing.
My question is that isn’t the privacy already breached when we pair the watch?
Also the [!] sign is there for the watch at end or whole list? For ex:
GTS, GTS 2, … , GTS 4 [!] is for GTS 4 only or the all GTS watch.
This seems to be the best for hackers like me.
https://codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/wiki/Amazfit-Bip-OS
Refurbished / ebay deals are nice ngl.
Rings seem best for sleeping ngl.
asteroid-health app is really looking promising.
Yeah this seems to be a deal breaker.