Review of Amazfish on SailfishOS
As a SailfishOS and smartwatch user, I'm using Amazfish companion app on a daily
basis and enjoy it.
I recently realised that (at least to my knowledge), there was no "proper"
review of it available out there, so I'm filling that gap with that article :)
What is Amazfish
The Author
Amazfish is developed by Adam Pigg, a British gentleman heavily involved in the SailfishOS community, as in addition to comitting Amazfish, he's also taking care of various SFOS ports :F(x)tec Pro1, PinePhone, and others.
At the beginning...
Amazfish started as a companion app for Amazfit Bip devices (hence the name),
implementing basic features such as synchronising the number of steps,
heart-rate, sleep data, and presenting that data into nice graphs in the app.
And of course notifications on your wrist :)
Evolutions
Then over time, it added alarms, weather, sync of workouts, events (calendar), ability to flash new firmwares and watchfaces (for supported devices).
New devices
The first Amazfit devices (Bip, MiBand 2, ...) were all using pretty much the same sync mechanisms, meaning they could work with Amazfit.
But Amazfit, when introducing new devices such as the nice GTS, changed that,
requiring a server-side pairing code.
Adam worked hard on that and managed to implement it in Amazfish, making it
possible to have newer Amazfit devices supported.
More recently, Adam added support for:
- the Pine64 smartwatch,
PineTime running the
InfiniTime firmware:
- the Bangle.js smartwatch:
Supported devices
As of today, Amazfish supports:
- Amazfit devices:
- Bip, Bip Lite, Bip S,
- GTS,
- GTR,
- Cor,
- Mi Band 2 and 3, Smart Band 4,
- PineTime (InfiniTime firmware),
- Bangle.js.
And even more devices
Adam ported Amazfish to Linux, making it possible to sync supported smartwatches with Linux, and e.g. update firmwares.
As of today, it is available for Manjaro Linux, and someone made a package for Arch Linux (which kind of makes sense since Manjaro is based on Arch).
Amazfish Features
Basic Features
- Pairing
- Notifications
- Calls
- Settings
- Alarms
Health Features
- Retrieving activities
- Heartrate Chart
- Activity Sync
Advanced Features
- Calendar/events sync
- Watchface download
- Firmware upload
- Navigation notifications
Misc. Features
- Exporting workout activites to Strava
- Send test notifications (email, call, notification) to the watch
- Low battery notification
- Notify on connect
Comparison table per device
Note: I don't own all of the below devices, so this list may contain mistakes; if that's the case, let me know and I'll update the table.
| Amazfit Bip/Lite/S | Amazfit GTS | Amazfit Core/Band | PineTime | Bangle.js | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pairing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Notifications | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Calls | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Settings | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Alarms | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Sync steps/Heartrate | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Sync Activities | Yes * | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Calendar sync | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Watchface download | Yes ** | No | Yes | No | No |
| Firmware upload | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Navigation notifications | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| * Not available on Bip Lite | ** Not available on Bip Lite/S | |||||
Daily usage
Amazfish runs in the background, there's no need to leave the application
running (one of the advantages of having it as an "unofficial" app on Openrepos,
not in Jolla Store).
This will give you notifications and other syncs.
Now if you want to download data from the watch to the phone (e.g. steps count, HRM, latest workout activity), you'll need to manually "download" this data using the Pulley menu.
Exporting Data
Amazfish stores its data into a Kexi database, which you can see as a replacement for Microsoft Access or Filemaker.
You can download this Kexi database file to your computer and easily manipulate your data, since Kexi uses a sqlite format.
Where to get Amazfish?
Amazfish is only available on Openrepos, so you can install it:
- either by downloading the RPM file and installing it via SSH (
pkcon install-local <amazfish-rpm>), - or by using Storeman, the Openrepos client application which you can install on your SFOS phone.
Wrap Up
Amazfish has become an essential app as a companion one if you're a SailfishOS
user.
It's becoming true for Linux users who are also "fiddling" with a PineTime.
Personally I like it a lot, and Adam is always super reactive to users' feedback and features requests, which makes it even nicer to use Amazfish when you see a new feature appearing, and you initially asked for it or helped testing it ^^
Tags: SailfishOS