I really like this product, but I have been on this journey, and will repost a comment i made to a recent thread about replacing your phone with an apple watch.
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on: One year of using an Apple Watch Ultra as a phone ...
I have done this as well, but with series 4. Some notes:
- Apple Watch receives calls forwarded from your phone which creates a bunch of weird problems: 1) Imagine you’re at a bar and get a phone call. You need to either answer on your watch immediately on speakerphone which means its hard to hear the caller and hard for them to hear you, and your conversation is not private. Or, dismiss the call, go outside, put your airpods in, hope they connect, call back, hope they answer, and hope the traffic isnt too bad around you because airpods do not have best mics. 2) connecting airpods really suck, especially at home. You have to have your phone in the charger for it to forward calls to your watch, so when you put on your airpods, they will likely connect to your phone, so you run to your phone, then your airpods “magically” connect to your watch all the while your caller is shouting “hello” into the void. Not ideal for work calls.
- I really hated not having a notes.app
- messages are kinda bad, especially if you’re non-english. And again, if you’re out at a bar and meeting someone, you cant really wait to get home to message back, you have to noodle around on the small screen.
- Your friends will tease you. I didnt mind, but its good to be prepared.
- its a teeny bit annoying wearing a tech-watch. Can get a bit hot etc.
- You need an iphone to update the watch. This really suck because you never really feel you actually let go of your phone, its a hassle updating over bluetooth, installing apps etc. I would LOVE an ipad/mac watch.app.
- You need Siri for many things, like maps.app, searching for certain things etc. It really sucks, like, completely unusable.
- doesnt work well switching from wifi to celluar. So many of the watches problems stems from connectitivty issues between wifi, bluetooth and celluar.
That said, i agree with every upside the OP mentioned. I will go back to watch+airpods again when it can work without an iPhone for calling and software updates. I think one new way to get around it is to setup watch with Family Setup. That way it can get calls without iPhone.
I think the biggest issue for many is using it in a car? As far as I know, the watch will not pair like a phone does for calls using the typical bluetooth standards that work just fine across all conventional cellphones.
Not being able to field calls in the car would make this an instant deal breaker before I even tried. If I have to bring a phone along to ensure car support, I'm stuck bringing a full-size cellphone with me most days anyway.
Losing Apple CarPlay (potentially no navigation app at all in your car) will also be massive detractor for a lot of folks. If you don't own a car, it's probably a ton more feasible with how the watch functions today though.
I haven't used my watch as a replacement phone, but my experience is quite different of the tech to yours.
Connecting AirPods is pretty straight forward. I don't recognise the pain. I also don't think it's always necessary, yes, not every call can be on speakerphone, but you can pick up, explain you're switching to headphones if necessary, it's fine.
I have AirPod Pros. The mic quality is great, even when on a busy street. Noise cancelling and adaptive audio is great.
I do not need my phone to be in the charger for call forwarding. I have the cellular version, and my watch buzzes on every call, no matter what state my phone is in. This might be a setting, I've never changed anything, but I absolutely do not have the experience you have.
Messages are fine if you realise the keyboard works as a swipe keyboard with auto-correct. You can also voice dictate, and the accuracy is decent, but then I'm British, so maybe it's trained on a data set that is more like my voice than many.
If your watch is getting hot, there might be a fault. I've had an Apple Watch since the Series 2, and I've never had it get hot unless it's in direct sunlight, and then it's like any other metal case watch.
Apple Watch requiring an iPhone is a major limitation, but I also don't mind it too much, as I'm always going to have an iPhone for those apps that I wouldn't want on my watch, but around me from time to time - banking, games, video players, and so on. I don't see my watch as a full replacement for my phone, but as a means to leave my phone home when it's too cumbersome - going out for a run, for example - or as a backup if my phone battery dies. Having it as Apple Pay and being able to use the transit card thing on TfL barriers in London makes it a slam dunk easy thing to use.
In short: it's still an extension of your phone, not a replacement. If you want it as a replacement, you might be waiting a while, and if you don't want to use speakerphone or figure out AirPods with it, that could be a frustrating experience.
Real happy to hear this. As i said, it was series 4 and the first airpods pro and here in europe (where we sometimes lag a bit behind in features), so maybe things are different now.
Re forwarded calls: maybe i misremember, maybe it was my local carrier or maybe apple has changed things but i’m glad things have changed. Can you recieve sms too? I couldn’t and this reply corroborates my experience https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40994017
Also, if you take your watch for a run with music playing on your aipods, does your watch stop the playback once you’re back in phone range? Mine does and i hate it.
I think music and podcasts are synced through iphone too, right? If you leave your phone turned off, will watch sync everything correctly?
In other words, constant sync and connection issues was what made me ditch my watch as any sort of replacement phone.
I've tried this several times too and still do phone less days quite often thanks to the watch, but my big obstacle has been the lack of Uber/Lyft which I use instead of having a car. They used to have those apps on the watch but unfortunately they don't.
If I could use Uber/Lyft on the watch I would mostly leave my phone on the charger.
You can set up your watch using a phone, and then turn the phone off and the watch still works. What doesn't work is SMS messages from non-apple users, because they are forwarded from the phone.
I set up my daughter's Apple Watch SE which we got her because phones are depression machines for teen girls (according to the Biden controlled MSM anyway) and I just set it up using my backup phone. I then backed up her setup, restored my setup, and when I need to update her watch or do something else administrative I just restore her backup to the phone, do what I need, then restore my backup to the phone, ready to fill in at a moment's notice if my phone needs to be repaired or gets lost or whatever.
I also take calls on my airpods connected to my watch pretty frequently because I exercise without my phone. I've never really had a problem with it.
on: One year of using an Apple Watch Ultra as a phone ...
I have done this as well, but with series 4. Some notes:
- Apple Watch receives calls forwarded from your phone which creates a bunch of weird problems: 1) Imagine you’re at a bar and get a phone call. You need to either answer on your watch immediately on speakerphone which means its hard to hear the caller and hard for them to hear you, and your conversation is not private. Or, dismiss the call, go outside, put your airpods in, hope they connect, call back, hope they answer, and hope the traffic isnt too bad around you because airpods do not have best mics. 2) connecting airpods really suck, especially at home. You have to have your phone in the charger for it to forward calls to your watch, so when you put on your airpods, they will likely connect to your phone, so you run to your phone, then your airpods “magically” connect to your watch all the while your caller is shouting “hello” into the void. Not ideal for work calls.
- I really hated not having a notes.app
- messages are kinda bad, especially if you’re non-english. And again, if you’re out at a bar and meeting someone, you cant really wait to get home to message back, you have to noodle around on the small screen.
- Your friends will tease you. I didnt mind, but its good to be prepared.
- its a teeny bit annoying wearing a tech-watch. Can get a bit hot etc.
- You need an iphone to update the watch. This really suck because you never really feel you actually let go of your phone, its a hassle updating over bluetooth, installing apps etc. I would LOVE an ipad/mac watch.app.
- You need Siri for many things, like maps.app, searching for certain things etc. It really sucks, like, completely unusable.
- doesnt work well switching from wifi to celluar. So many of the watches problems stems from connectitivty issues between wifi, bluetooth and celluar. That said, i agree with every upside the OP mentioned. I will go back to watch+airpods again when it can work without an iPhone for calling and software updates. I think one new way to get around it is to setup watch with Family Setup. That way it can get calls without iPhone.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39982713#39988624