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Random Locking???
- Thread starter AngusW
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If your watch loses contact with your skin it will lock. Are you wearing it loose?
I have noticed this with a specific band. I bought an OE Apple dark blue sport band a few weeks ago, and I have noticed that my watch frequently locks when I am wearing that band. All other bands are fine. The new band looks and feels exactly the same as every other OE and knock-off sport band I own. But, it will not reliably stay unlocked.
Have you changed anything. Different band?
Have you changed anything. Different band?
Yes. Sadly, in its present form AW is a bit flawed. First of all there's the random unlocking unless I wear it as tight as a blood pressure cuff. I know it's too tight because the veins in my hand are swollen when I finally get it tight enough to never randomly lock itself. Then there's random loss of ability to unlock by using touch id on my iPhone 6. This always involves resetting my iPhone 6. Together these two flaws just about ruin my AW ownership experience.
Over 6 months ago, I made a series of posts about how sorely lacking AW was as a fitness device for distance runners. It would randomly lock during runs and my sweaty long sleeve running shirts and jackets would cause nuisance touch-screen swipes that put my watch into any random mode from weather to stock reports instead of showing my distance and pace. Then there was the lack of heartrate during exercise. What nonsense! These were so annoying I went out and bought a Garmin Forerunner 220. I now wear both devices for all my runs. I also wear the uncomfortable Garmin heartrate strap during my runs.
There are times I absolutely love my AW. It is great to be able to respond to a text during a meeting merely by tipping my wrist to read it, tapping reply and picking one of the canned responses. Often I'm in a situation where I can dictate my response to Siri. Of course all of these features stop working as soon as the watch decides to lock itself and punching in an unlock code to do anything is just as inconvenient as digging for my phone so I opt for digging out my phone instead.
This weekend I ran a half marathon. At mile 10, we ran through a Naval Air Station hangar. I decided to take a photo. My iPhone somehow came up in panorama mode and with my sweaty hands I simply could not get it to take a normal photo. I added an entire minute to my time and never caught up with the woman I had been pacing since mile 3 because of the poor performance of touchscreens with sweaty fingers. This is something Apple needs to get serious about if they want professional or even recreational athletes to even take a look at their gear, especially Apple Watch. I'm so turned off my my AW experience, I avoided getting a Garmin 620 simply because it had a touchscreen. To me touchscreens and fitness are incompatible with today's technology.
Sweaty arms also cause the watch to lock itself more frequently. I use the sport band which has very coarse length adjustment of about 3/16 to 1/4 inch diameter per hole. Perhaps I'd have a better experience if I had the finer diameter adjustment of Apple's milanese loop bracelet.
I am using a different band, I'm using a third-party link band. I could remove one more link, however when I do that it's way too tight.
Link bands are the most notorious for the random unlocking especially if a little looser. At least my experience when I had a link band.
Then here's hoping for a good leather band release today! I'm hoping for a modern buckle in 42mm size.
The odd thing is, I do not think the issue has anything to do with length alone. My new band is exactly the same length that I wear every other band. It may be holding it away from my wrist or maybe the band color is affecting things (though my black band is perfect). If your AW is fine with the other band, then it is something in the geometry or movement of the new band that affects it. As an aside, my third-party link band is perfect with my watch.
These are your problems, but I do not think they are representative of the general population of owners. I agree that the AW is horrible as a fitness device. But, to the contrary of your experiences, I have rarely or never had the problems you list. I have hundreds of miles with my AW in all kinds of conditions, and it only occasionally loses HR. I think I have only had one or two events where a long sleeve shirt messed up tracking. Also, my battery life for endurance events is easily in excess of 5 hours.
I have the OEM gray link bracelet and occasionally have this same issue, and it is adjusted properly. It's not a huge deal, maybe happens once a day with this band. But it would be a good idea if the Watch would "tap" you when it locks, so you at least notice it and can simply unlock it, instead of possibly noticing hours later.
I agree having the link alarm would be good. Also good to have if you are out of range of the phone. As far as frequency, if it was once day for me I wouldn't mind it. That's why I've turned off wrist detection to try and keep it a little more open for use.