Apple Watches and Wireless

[coxhaus]

My wife wanted an Apple watch. AT&T had a deal to get $250 off the second Apple watch and only $10 per month for each watch. So my wife bought me an Apple watch. I don't really know how to work everything but I can call or receive a call without having to have my iPhone along which is nice. I have had it a week now. I assume the watch is doing WiFi calling but I can't tell whether it is WiFi or LTE. Has anybody tested WiFi roaming using their Apple Watch?

It also seems to work fine with my HomeKit running on my AppleTV4K. I can turn on and off lights using the watch. I am not sure whether it is WiFi or blue tooth. Anybody doing this?

 

[MichaelCG]

All current generation watches will have WiFi and Bluetooth.

How it behaves completely depends on what model you have. If it can take/make calls without the iPhone present at all, you more than likely have the cellular model. I do not have the cellular model so the WiFi/Bluetooth connection is required back to my iPhone. If my iPhone is powered off, my Watch is extremely limited on what it can do. When I go out for a run without my phone, my watch is nothing more than a portable GPS tracker and music player. It cannot do anything on network until I return to the house to get to WiFi and/or my iPhone.

 

[coxhaus]

Yes I have a cell model 5 Apple watch. It requires a $10 cell line. Yes it can make independent calls. I assume AT&T wants their money so they only sell cell versions.

I am trying to figure out how the watch works in regards to the wireless network, blue tooth and cell towers. It seems to prefer to use the iPhone if present.

So if you go into your gear on the watch does it have wireless networks? I would think so. If you are on a wireless network can you do WiFi calling?

 

[thiggins]

I just got a refurb Gen 5 without the LTE radio. All you can do with Wi-Fi and BT on the watch is to turn them on/off. There is no way to scan or associate to Wi-Fi networks.

My guess is that the watch clones the Wi-Fi connection info from the iPhone. I just turned off BT and WiFi on the phone and put it in airplane mode. The watch still showed connection to the phone and was able to ping/find it.

 

[Pak Kriss]

Interesting. Airplane mode and BT/WiFi off and still connectivity.

I just got a refurb Gen 5 without the LTE radio. All you can do with Wi-Fi and BT on the watch is to turn them on/off. There is no way to scan or associate to Wi-Fi networks.

My guess is that the watch clones the Wi-Fi connection info from the iPhone. I just turned off BT and WiFi on the phone and put it in airplane mode. The watch still showed connection to the phone and was able to ping/find it.

Sent from my SM-T805 using Asus RT-AC86U & Merlin 384.13

 

[L&LD]

@Pak Kriss, Apple; 'protecting' the user from themselves, even to the extremes of non-functionality.

I don't understand.

 

[ACwifiguy]

The watch clones the 2.4ghz wifi details from the phone.

For non LTE models - if you turn on wifi calling on your phone you can use that feature to call with your watch when connected to wifi (but not within Bluetooth range of your phone).

I’ve not seen that the watch stays connected with airplane mode on. The watch does lag and will show the device as “still connected” but nothing works (there is no connection, the watch is just lagging behind).

Those nuances aside. Overall I love the Apple watch. I agree - I wish you had the control to connect to the wifi of your choice from the watch and wish it had dual band capability.

 

[EmeraldDeer]

On Apple Watch 2, I can go to Settings --> WiFi and choose a 2.4 GHz SSID. Odd how this is removed in later versions.

 

[coxhaus]

Interesting. If I go into setting under Wi-Fi I have on&off, and a list of networks. It states on my watch that it will use Wi-Fi if my iPhone is not avaible.

Do you have the latest watch OS? 6.1.2

 

[XIII]

I just turned off BT and WiFi on the phone and put it in airplane mode. The watch still showed connection to the phone and was able to ping/find it.

How did you turn it off?

Via Control Center or in the iOS Settings page?

Apple changed the behavior (around iOS 11?); via CC is not really off:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086

 

[thiggins]

Sorry, all, I gave bad information.
You can see 2.4 GHz networks if you go to Settings > WiFi on the Watch 5. My previous info was from looking at just the swipe up shortcut menu.

I turned off WiFi and BT on the iPhone using the swipe up menu