Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss a law to check if phone use caused an accident, Walmart's kid-friendly tablet, Android Pie and Android Q, shopping via Instagram, Weight Watchers tech encouragement, new AirPods, iPad and iPhone inflation math, and more.

Terry in Carthage, Missouri listens to the podcast and asked: "I have a Samsung Gear Sport smartwatch. I was recently in the hospital. When I went into the hospital, I left it on the charger. When I came back and took it off the charger, it was off. Now it won't take a charge, can't get it to turn on. When I got out of the hospital, it was about a week past the 1-year warranty on it. If you guys have any tricks up your sleeve to get that thing to work again, I'd appreciate it."

Terry, we have heard of this before and the supposed solution is a little bit strange.

You’d think that if the watch is dead putting it on the charger would revive it, but what you’re experiencing seems to affect a good amount of users.

The first and more normal solution is to hold down the power button for 10 seconds or so to force a hard reset. Some people claim that doing that has revived their watches and it is a solution more in line with what we would normally expect to solve an issue like this one.

The second and stranger solution is to disconnect the watch from the wall charger and instead plug it into a computer’s USB port and wait 10 or 15 minutes.

There’s nothing special about computer USB ports that allow them to do CPR on watches, but we’ve heard this report enough time to think that it’s worth recommending. Evidently, once the watch comes back to life charging it on the wall charger as you were before is not a problem, but reviving it may take a computer.

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