I see the Apple Watch is one of the toggles. Does this mean the watch now has phone capabilities away from the phone? Like if I left my phone at home and had my watch I could receive calls? If so, do I need to be connected to wifi? Or just with cell reception?
I see the Apple Watch is one of the toggles. Does this mean the watch now has phone capabilities away from the phone? Like if I left my phone at home and had my watch I could receive calls? If so, do I need to be connected to wifi? Or just with cell reception?
This is actually much more on the carrier side than it is an Apple feature (though, they have to enable the handoff in continuity).
From a consumer perspective it's called wifi calling. If you are a T-Mobile subscriber, you'll be able to do this when iOS9 (and presumably Watch OS v2.0) is shipped. The actual technical name for wifi calling is UMA/GAN.
T-mobile in the US and Rogers in Canada both have this capability (to use VoIP to seamlessly transition your call over to wifi when it's available). I'm sure there's other carriers around the world that have also enabled it.
As far as I'm aware neither Verizon nor AT&T have enabled wifi calling in the US yet.
Historically, the carriers have tried to block VoIP to cellular phones. Airtime/minutes is big money for them. If everyone goes to just data and uses VoIP, they'll need to find another revenue stream to make up for the lost revenue. (VoIP stand for Voice over IP).
