The Galaxy Gear comes with one major fault – it works only with select Samsung smartphones like the Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Mini, Galaxy S III and Galaxy Mega. Let’s say you own some other, non-Samsung device and you want to connect it to the Galaxy Gear – you can’t do it. At least not using the default configuration.
Enter XDA hackers who have managed to “force” Galaxy Gear accept connections from few other devices including the Nexus 5 and Sony Xperia Z Ultra with Google Play Edition software (so we guess HTC One Google Play Edition will work just as well). Here’s what you need to do to get notifications to your Nexus 5 (or some Google Edition smartphone):
- Install gearmanagerstub.apk on your phone
- Download Gear Manager 1.6.111801 and rename the APK file to ZIP
- Open that ZIP file and go to assets/preinstallapks
- Install ever APK file found here to your device one by one (music and weather will not install, though).
- Install the full Gear Manager 1.6.111801 APK (the actual APK, not the ZIP)
- Pair your Galaxy Gear to the phone (try NFC-based connection and if it doesn’t work try manually pairing the two devices)
- Install ATNManager 1.2.2
- Allow ATNManager access from Settings -> Security -> Notification Access
- Now choose which notifications you’d like to receive on your Galaxy Gear from ATNManager.
And you should be good to go. Unfortunately, weather widget/app won’t work and the same goes for S-Voice. The rest of the features should work like charm, including the dialer, voice memo, contacts and find my device. Sweet. 😉
[Via: SmartWatchFans]