Galaxy Watch LTE duplicate messages

The settings I posted was at the recommendation of the Samsung rep when I got my replacement. I was just putting out there what he recommended.  I understand it's a quick fix and does need to be followed up on.

Mine does the same thing. Hopefully there will be an update soon.

Me, my wife, and my sister in law are all having this issue with our watches. I wish I had known about this issue sooner as it would have been a deal breaker for me and I am past the window for a return. Our household has now spent ~$800 on two of these watches and only recently did I discover this problem, as I'm usually on BT.

I acknowledge that the always on LTE/Disable Bluetooth settings do fix the flood of notifications issue, but it still duplicates the notifications on both phone and watch which is almost as annoying. As mentioned above, I also do not accept this as a solution.

If this issue isn't resolved, what are my options as a customer past the 14 day mark? Just sell the watch privately? I don't think that's fair since this is a defect in the software/system and not just because "I changed my mind". Reading about all these returns makes me regret my purchase.

Purchased 2 Galaxy watches this week for Xmas.  42 and 46 mm. Same issue on both watches. Neither of us are running DIGITS. I tend to believe root cause was explained by @magenta6898941 above. Using LTE full time defeats the basic purpose of why these watches were marketed and sold to the TMobile customer community. It's sad to see this thread go on for over 3 months now and no official update that the issue has been acknowledge as a TMobile problem and a fix is being taken seriously and being worked on. Having hundreds of messages buzz our watches every time we lose a BT connection just isn't sustainable.

I had a Gear S3 on Verizon prior to this and it worked just fine. The fact that this was discovered and reported by the customer community is also troubling. This is a blatant problem. I really enjoyed moving over to TMobile and the experience but they have really missed the mark with not addressing this prior to release. Its really frustrating not to be able to take advantage of the latest technology.  I'll give it another week and scour other forums for a fix before we return both devices. If I find anything I'll post here. Good luck all.

I found a process that resolved this issue on both my watch and my wife's watch.  We both have the Active 2 (but in different sizes).  I am a t-mobile fan but did find it frustrating that I was told several times that the receiving a duplicate notification for every text every time I switched from Bluetooth to cellular data was normal.  The process I will detail below fixed 2 issues for both my wife and I.  Hopefully it can help others.  We have S10e phones but I suspect this will work on any android phone.

First the problems:

1. Getting duplicate notification on the watch every time the watch connects to cellular network.

2. Both watches had a voicemail notification that could not be cleared.  (I was told that I would just need to ignore it)

Now the fix.  I have no idea if all of this is needed but I will describe the exact steps I took that fixed both issues.  I waited a week to ensure it really seemed fixed it on my watch and then did it with my wife's watch.  Both watches are fixed of these 2 issues.  It takes about 10-20 minutes assuming minimal call times.

1. Go to the Wear app on your phone.  Then choose "Mobile Networks".  The click the 3 dots and choose "Reset Mobile Networks" (your watch will reboot and will no longer have access to the t-mobile network.  You'll have to call T-mobile to restore network connectivity so do it when you have time to call t-mobile.)

2. Call t-mobile.  Ask to be connected to DIGITS support.  They will likely want to try other things but stick to the process.   Tell them you reset the network and you need to re-add it to your watch.  They will text you a code and you will follow the prompts to add a network in that same menu in the Wear app on the phone.  Once the watch is re-added to network it will reboot.

3. Now have them change your DIGITS plan to a regular phone plan.

4. The t-mobile employee will then need to call your WATCH number (not your cell number) and leave a voicemail.  Make sure they say at least a sentence as very short messages won't register.  You will get a notification on your watch that you have a voicemail.  Either click the link in the notification or dial 123 from your watch (not your phone).  You will have to set-up the voicemail.  Once setup you need to play the message the employee just left and hit 7 to delete.

5. Now have t-mobile change the watch line back to a DIGITS line.

That's it.  The voicemail notification should be gone and duplicate notifications should be fixed.  I suspect you don't need step 5 if you only have the duplicate notification issue but might be better to just do everything.  Like I said before, I am a t-mobile fan but it is frustrating to be told to just live with it or that the issue is how it is designed when it is clearly an issue with t-mobile.

T-mobile (if you read this) please clean-up this process into a useful KB and ensure all support staff is made aware that there is a fix.  You could even troubleshoot this and see what steps are and are not needed to make it more streamlined.

I have a theory on why this happened.  When we went to the local t-mobile store to get the watches they didn't have what we wanted in stock.  So they ordered them for us.  However, they wanted to activate the new lines for the watches in the store (I suspect that benefits them - which is fine).  So they activated the new watch lines to SIM cards they had in the store and told me when the watches arrived to come in and they would switch the lines to the SIM built into the watch.  I did just that.  I suspect something about having the lines initially activated to the SIM cards in-store and then changed to the watch SIMs caused the issue.  Perhaps that process was done incorrectly in my case or perhaps it needs fixed and then the issue would be resolved before it starts.

I never post to these things but have really enjoyed the watch so much more since fixing both issues and wanted to share.  T-mobile - there are numerous people in these forums who have just returned the watch had given up (and some that likely left t-mobile over it).  I'd take the time to get this fixed.

GOOD LUCK!

I have the same issue with my new Galaxy Watch 3. This issue with cached messages flooding the watch when disconnected from the phone did not occur on Verizon with the same watch. This is a solvable issue T-Mobile!

My concern is that having LTE set to be always on will drain the battery very quickly. 

My hope is that, since competitors to T-Mobile can correctly sync messages through their DIGITS equivalent, that T-Mobile will get this corrected ASAP.

I'm having the same problem with my 3! Just switched from iphone and i never had these issues with the apple watch!

TheWolfAmongUs wrote:

And it looks like its doing it again! 

I was on the phone with the Digits team yesterday.  They said to turn LTE on all the time on the watch. That didn't do anything except I got the duplicate texts one right after the other.  Plus it will kill the battery.  

I have an open ticket with the engineering team that I asked to be escalated.  Not hopeful, but we'll see.  May start hitting up both T-Mobile and Samsung on Twitter.  This is unacceptable. 

It worked for me and I think is how it's supposed to work until they get a better solution. 

this watch is trash!!! I have the brand new Samsung galaxy 3 watch and every time it disconnects from phone I get flooded with duplicate messages. This is as of OCT 2020. It happened so much I havent even had the watxh for 11 days it drained the battery so much it doesn't charge right. It constantly drains my watch as I disconnect often.......the iwatch did not.do this....... i love my saumg phone amd.switchwd after 14 years with apple products. However the watch is complete trash and useless to meike this. I couldn't even do one hike and every time I picked up signal it would resend the same messages over and over and drained my battery after only 6 hours of.use... total trash 🗑 😒