Galaxy Watch LTE duplicate messages

Yes.  I have Apple watch as well and no issue like this ever.  However, I’m not blaming Samsung as this appears to be a T-Mobile issue.  I’m asking T-Mobile to assign a higher level engineer to my ticket.  Clearly it’s not a problem with my phone, SIM, wifi, etc.  

Tired of all the dumb troubleshooting steps.  

Amanda, I haven't had the issue with the duplicate messages since the Samsung rep set my watch up. (The settings are above in one of my posts) The battery issue is better than the last watch lasting about 15 hours average not 3 hours. I'm assuming this watch came with the update because I have no updates available.

It worked for me and I think is how it's supposed to work until they get a better solution. 

Mine does the same thing. Hopefully there will be an update soon.

Purchased 2 Galaxy watches this week for Xmas.  42 and 46 mm. Same issue on both watches. Neither of us are running DIGITS. I tend to believe root cause was explained by @magenta6898941 above. Using LTE full time defeats the basic purpose of why these watches were marketed and sold to the TMobile customer community. It’s sad to see this thread go on for over 3 months now and no official update that the issue has been acknowledge as a TMobile problem and a fix is being taken seriously and being worked on. Having hundreds of messages buzz our watches every time we lose a BT connection just isn’t sustainable.

I had a Gear S3 on Verizon prior to this and it worked just fine. The fact that this was discovered and reported by the customer community is also troubling. This is a blatant problem. I really enjoyed moving over to TMobile and the experience but they have really missed the mark with not addressing this prior to release. Its really frustrating not to be able to take advantage of the latest technology.  I’ll give it another week and scour other forums for a fix before we return both devices. If I find anything I’ll post here. Good luck all.

I found a process that resolved this issue on both my watch and my wife's watch.  We both have the Active 2 (but in different sizes).  I am a t-mobile fan but did find it frustrating that I was told several times that the receiving a duplicate notification for every text every time I switched from Bluetooth to cellular data was normal.  The process I will detail below fixed 2 issues for both my wife and I.  Hopefully it can help others.  We have S10e phones but I suspect this will work on any android phone.

First the problems:

1. Getting duplicate notification on the watch every time the watch connects to cellular network.

2. Both watches had a voicemail notification that could not be cleared.  (I was told that I would just need to ignore it)

Now the fix.  I have no idea if all of this is needed but I will describe the exact steps I took that fixed both issues.  I waited a week to ensure it really seemed fixed it on my watch and then did it with my wife's watch.  Both watches are fixed of these 2 issues.  It takes about 10-20 minutes assuming minimal call times.

1. Go to the Wear app on your phone.  Then choose "Mobile Networks".  The click the 3 dots and choose "Reset Mobile Networks" (your watch will reboot and will no longer have access to the t-mobile network.  You'll have to call T-mobile to restore network connectivity so do it when you have time to call t-mobile.)

2. Call t-mobile.  Ask to be connected to DIGITS support.  They will likely want to try other things but stick to the process.   Tell them you reset the network and you need to re-add it to your watch.  They will text you a code and you will follow the prompts to add a network in that same menu in the Wear app on the phone.  Once the watch is re-added to network it will reboot.

3. Now have them change your DIGITS plan to a regular phone plan.

4. The t-mobile employee will then need to call your WATCH number (not your cell number) and leave a voicemail.  Make sure they say at least a sentence as very short messages won't register.  You will get a notification on your watch that you have a voicemail.  Either click the link in the notification or dial 123 from your watch (not your phone).  You will have to set-up the voicemail.  Once setup you need to play the message the employee just left and hit 7 to delete.

5. Now have t-mobile change the watch line back to a DIGITS line.

That's it.  The voicemail notification should be gone and duplicate notifications should be fixed.  I suspect you don't need step 5 if you only have the duplicate notification issue but might be better to just do everything.  Like I said before, I am a t-mobile fan but it is frustrating to be told to just live with it or that the issue is how it is designed when it is clearly an issue with t-mobile.

T-mobile (if you read this) please clean-up this process into a useful KB and ensure all support staff is made aware that there is a fix.  You could even troubleshoot this and see what steps are and are not needed to make it more streamlined.

I have a theory on why this happened.  When we went to the local t-mobile store to get the watches they didn't have what we wanted in stock.  So they ordered them for us.  However, they wanted to activate the new lines for the watches in the store (I suspect that benefits them - which is fine).  So they activated the new watch lines to SIM cards they had in the store and told me when the watches arrived to come in and they would switch the lines to the SIM built into the watch.  I did just that.  I suspect something about having the lines initially activated to the SIM cards in-store and then changed to the watch SIMs caused the issue.  Perhaps that process was done incorrectly in my case or perhaps it needs fixed and then the issue would be resolved before it starts.

I never post to these things but have really enjoyed the watch so much more since fixing both issues and wanted to share.  T-mobile - there are numerous people in these forums who have just returned the watch had given up (and some that likely left t-mobile over it).  I'd take the time to get this fixed.

GOOD LUCK!

I am having the same issue and it's 2 years later! I'd there a solution?

this watch is trash!!! I have the brand new Samsung galaxy 3 watch and every time it disconnects from phone I get flooded with duplicate messages. This is as of OCT 2020. It happened so much I havent even had the watxh for 11 days it drained the battery so much it doesn't charge right. It constantly drains my watch as I disconnect often.......the iwatch did not.do this....... i love my saumg phone amd.switchwd after 14 years with apple products. However the watch is complete trash and useless to meike this. I couldn't even do one hike and every time I picked up signal it would resend the same messages over and over and drained my battery after only 6 hours of.use... total trash 🗑 😒 

that's what i'm afraid of having to do, is toggle the "always on" feature on the mobile data as that DOES seem to prevent the duplicate messages.  The problem i have with that is that with it set to "auto" i get 3 days and 2 nights of battery before i have to charge my watch.  With mobile data always on I am using about 6% of battery per hour meaning that my watch won't even last a full day which is not acceptable for me considering the device was advertised to have a 5 day battery (i have the 46mm).  I don't expect actually getting that long but I don't feel that we should have to sacrifice the battery life completely just to fix a bug.

It would be great if there was any more information on the issue from T-mobile's perspective, because TBH I am getting pointed both ways.  Samsung has indicated to me that it is an issue with how my DIGITS is set up that is causing the duplication while T-Mobile is indicating that it's a software issue on the watch itself. 

Would my DIGITS not being set up properly cause this? 

I was asking about DIGITS in reference to the original issue being discussed on this thread which pertains to duplicate text messages being received when on LTE, not battery life.  I am hoping that someone with T-Mobile can clarify if an issue with how they set up DIGITS on my watch could be what is causing that to happen as that is what Samsung is implying.

It would be great if it know when it is paired with a phone and any messages batched while that pairing is in place do not go through.  That would solve the duplicates.  Or just somehow allow them to arrive instantaneously instead of 1 at a time.  Anything is better than what is is because as mentioned above, turning on always on LTE DOES appear to solve the problem, but it also reduces the battery life to a level that is not acceptable.  My watch lasts 3 days with LTE set to auto and less than 16 hours with it always on.

There MUST be a work around.  Please let us know if you are still actively looking into this or not.

I was under the impression, that if you were to run 2 regular app messages on your phone, it will always duplicate to a watch.

so if you were to have messages and the one that came with your phone, messaging, whatever you want to call it, one has to be fully disabled.

if you use messages, then the built in one has to be disabled. some you cannot. so simply disable it’s data in back ground mode, turn off all of it’s permissions, turn off that it can draw on top of other apps, etc. restart and this can greatly help.

when more than one messaging app (for mms or data texting, etc) is installed on the phone. It will receive that signal twice. should correct duplicates on the phone, texts, notification sent to watches, etc. good luck.