Updating the firmware (or "kernel") of the Vector Watch should be an easy process. But it can sometimes fail... and when it does you will be left with a frozen watch, making you feel desperate because you just spent a lot of money on a device that is not working properly. Fortunately, there are ways to get past this. Just as you can solve any kind of problem if you are patient.
If you would like to read my full review of the Vector Watch, click here.
I've had this problem myself and spent quite a lot of time sending e-mails back and forth to the support staff of Vector and reading obscure forums (sorry, but that's the reality). I will share with you the information I gathered in a compact form. If you have other issues with your watch or if this does not help you, please don't hate on me... (for me it worked), but rather write an e-mail to the Vector support department: info@vectorwatch.com.
So, let's begin. Your Vector Watch was performing the initial setup and when it started to update the kernel the connection dropped (or whatever) and now both your phone and your watch have been stuck at the same percentage for over 1 hour. Here is what you could do:
It wasn't that hard, now, was it? And it sure was less of a hassle than having to go through the return process... unless this does not fix your problem, at least. In that case, I recommend returning your Vector Watch and swapping it for a new one.
If you would like to read my full review of the Vector Watch, click here.
I've had this problem myself and spent quite a lot of time sending e-mails back and forth to the support staff of Vector and reading obscure forums (sorry, but that's the reality). I will share with you the information I gathered in a compact form. If you have other issues with your watch or if this does not help you, please don't hate on me... (for me it worked), but rather write an e-mail to the Vector support department: info@vectorwatch.com.
So, let's begin. Your Vector Watch was performing the initial setup and when it started to update the kernel the connection dropped (or whatever) and now both your phone and your watch have been stuck at the same percentage for over 1 hour. Here is what you could do:
- Press and hold the upper and middle buttons simultaneously for ~20s. This will open something called "the bootloader". You will see now a message in the upper section telling you that the update failed. Underneath that, you have 3 options: restart watch, unpair watch, and factory reset watch.
- Press the button that corresponds to "unpair". When that's completed, select "factory reset". This will not necessarily work, because your watch may freeze right after launching the bootloader. Despair not, this is not that bad. Simply skip step 3 and jump to step 4.
- Uninstall the Vector Watch app from your phone, reboot your phone and reinstall the app. Go through the setup process again now. If your problem is not solved continue to the next step.
- Things are starting to get a little bit tricky now. You will need a computer (laptop, desktop, anything with a USB port does) with Google Chrome installed. You will also need the USB cable that came with your watch. You will now have to install the Chrome plugin "Vector Watch Update Tool". Once it is installed, you need to launch it from chrome://apps/. Now connect your Vector Watch to your computer via USB and login to the Vector app on Chrome with the credentials you used when first setting up the Vector Watch on your phone. If things are going accordingly, you should see a page in the app for Chrome that displays the following: "Connected to [ID of your Vector Watch]/ vectorOS version [vOS version you were updating from]". Since your watch froze during an update, you should now click on the orange "Start update" button and the process will begin automatically [BE WARNED: DO NOT CLOSE THE APP WHEN THE UPDATE IS IN PROGRESS, DO NOT DISCONNECT YOUR COMPUTER FROM THE INTERNET, THIS COULD BRICK YOUR WATCH COMPLETELY]. It is very unlikely that this freezes again now.
- [FOR WINDOWS USERS] If that app still has not detected any watch, even if you connected yours via USB cable, you need to force Windows to install the right drivers. On your computer open "Control Panel -> Device Manager" (or press the Windows key + X and select "Device Manager"). Now scroll down until you see "Other Devices". The item listed as "Vector Watch" should have an exclamation mark next to it. Right-click this item with the exclamation mark and select "Update driver software" -> "Browse my computer for driver software" -> "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer" -> scroll down to "Universal serial bus devices" -> choose "WinUSB Device" (if there are more options available here choose the one that has the newest date in the version number between parenthesis) -> "Next -> "Yes". If you go back to the app you will see that it detected the watch now on its own now. Follow the instructions outlined in step 4. After this, you're done.
- [FOR APPLE MAC OSX USERS] Open the Terminal application and type "brew install libusb-compat" (without the quotation marks) and press Enter (or Return; I'm not exactly familiar with OSX).
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| This is just a small activity diagram I made to help visualize the whole process |
It wasn't that hard, now, was it? And it sure was less of a hassle than having to go through the return process... unless this does not fix your problem, at least. In that case, I recommend returning your Vector Watch and swapping it for a new one.
Thanks for reading, folks, that's all for now. If you liked this article be sure to check out my other articles, you can find those at the top of the page. Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments down below. If you loved this article I'd appreciate a thumbs-up, or even a follow.
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