i'm thinking of getting a smartwatch to possibly replace the need for a phone (if it fails i'll use it to go on runs instead of having a chunky phone with me), trying to google it i've mostly seen watchface piracy but nothing about apps
I used to have a wear OS 2.0 watch, you could actually pirate alot of watch faces for free using a loophole in the wear play store. Only works for Android phones.
Basically install an apk of the companion app for the watch face.
Then open the wear play store on your Watch and into owned apps, it will give you an option to install the watch face associated with the companion app installed on your connected phone.
Install the watch face, and there you go, you will even get updates as if you bought it.
Ofcourse it all depends on if someone archived an apk of the companion app or not. It’s been a whole year too since my wear OS watch - a Huawei II Sport stopped working on me and I didn’t bother to try to fix it, probably a battery issue. With Wear OS 3.0, Google may have patched it. Worth a shot though, if you have a 2.0 watch, should work.
My advice to you will be you should likely look to getting a Developer Account/using a free one from something like AppDB. I am not sure how things will be with sideloading, but services like AppDB have plenty of options sideloading pirated apps. I’m sure that will be updated at some point for wearOS.
The big “but” in all this, is unless it requires you to tie it to an iPhone/Mac, there may not be a way to extract ipa files to sideload.
If you mean WATCHos, then yeah. AppDB sideload to an iphone. Example is like Calcbot 2, you can sideload it to your phone and use the watchos app cause its on your phone.
in my experience being a part of both communities, there isn't a wearos piracy scene at all. i've seen a few shared watchfaces here & there since wearos (well, then android wear) launched, but i can count on my fingers how many times that's happened. definitely not enough to count as a scene or community imo.
to your first point of getting a watch to replace a phone though, as someone who's owned multiple wearos watches (both stock & oneui) & tried to use the watch as the primary device multiple times i'd recommend against it atm. even on the best wearos watches (the gw4/5 atm) the experience as a primary device is just, not there yet. while samsung did a lot for wearos, watch apps are still clunky & still omit even the most basic features, some of the worst offenders imo being the stock wearos/google apps (google clock still doesn't even let you set an alarm name, tone or snooze time).
this all applies of course when there even is a watch app, a lot of android apps either simply don't make one or ended up abandoning theirs years ago - even apps you'd expect to naturally have one like first party apps (gmail & google calendar were JUST announced after a decade of wearos being alive) or messaging apps. essentially, software-wise on a galaxy watch everything aside from built-in oneui apps & the few best wearos apps will just frustrate you & make you pull out your phone. on a stock wearos watch... lol.
an even bigger issue than software though, is hardware. while i don't have an lte watch, from what i've heard from people that do use their watches without their phones near regularly, watches still run terribly without piggybacking off the phone for everything, & using lte & disconnecting from the phone pretty much instantly causes heat, lag & battery usage to double. i've experienced a bit of this myself by turning my phone off & trying to do basic tasks like listening to music, texting & talking to assistant. though i (obviously) didn't get the heat & battery drain that comes with an lte connection, the whole experience just becomes kinda laggy & choppy when the companion app isn't connected
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