Help Pairing Moto 360 With Murena /e/ OS on Fairphone 5

I have a Fairphone 5 running the latest build of Murena’s /e/ OS, and I can’t get it to pair with my Moto 360 Gen 3. Every time I try to pair it via the Wear OS app, the process times out and I get an error that says “Cannot complete setup” at the top, then “can’t update your watch” and it tells me to reset.

I had the watch paired with my Fairphone 4 running iodéOS, but it took some trick involving pairing with the Chinese and US-based versions of the Wear OS app in a specific order. I have a copy of the Wear OS China app, but trying to pair with it gives me an error saying that I can’t use it outside of China. I’ve been trying to find the guide I used for this originally, but literal hours of searching has turned up nothing.

I’m about at my wits’ end here. Any thoughts on what I can do get this damn thing working with my new phone? Even unpaired, I can get wifi debugging working, if that will help!


EDIT: I found the original XDA thread I was thinking of, “Eureka! Wear works on microG!” Unfortunately, the method described there doesn’t work anymore, but I got this working using a modified version of the same approach.

  1. Install the old version of Wear OS China located here, dated October 23, 2021

  2. Install the old version of Wear OS US located here, dated October 9 2020.

(Note that newer versions of these apps might still work, but this is what got me up and running while I was experimenting with different approaches.)

  1. Run the Chinese Wear OS and go through the pairing process until it prompts you to download the US version.

  2. Run the old US version of Wear OS that you already installed. My watch got about 90% of the way through the pairing process and then the Wear OS app on my phone stopped advancing. After the pairing process stops advancing, uninstall the US Wear OS app.

  3. Open the Chinese Wear OS app. Your watch should be paired and connected. It may take a minute or two to change out of the “continue setup process on your phone” screen (or whatever the exact language is, I don’t recall).

And that’s it! My Wear device is now paired with a phone that’s using MicroG. This isn’t ideal, since my watch has ended up paired with the Chinese version of the app, but I mostly just want my watch to echo phone notifications, and I keep Wear OS blocked from internet access with a firewall rule anyway.

Let me know in the comments if this works for you! I’m interested to hear other folks’ experience with this.

Did you try to ask the Murena support, as this seems to be a software, not a hardware issue.

Yes, I’ve asked about this in a few different places. It’s an oddly specific problem, so I’m hoping someone somewhere will be able to offer suggestions. If someone could even find that guide I used regarding the American and Chinese Wear OS apps, that would be a useful place to start!

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