Apple watch 3 with Android phone

[edhchoe]

I have a Galaxy and an iPhone SE.
Today I activated my Apple watch 42mm Space Grey aluminum LTE watch on T mobile network.
After I set it up at the Apple store, I turned off the iphone and the AW3 worked on Cellular network right away. I was thrilled!!

When I got home, I pulled the SIM card out of the iPhone and I turned the phone off. I inserted the SIM card in my Galaxy S6.
The AW3 still works great!
So yes, If you have both an iphone and an Android phone, you can use the iphone to set up the watch initially and then wear the watch while you carry the android phone. But how long the battery will last is to be determined...

 

[Peter K.]

I have a Galaxy and an iPhone SE.
Today I activated my Apple watch 42mm Space Grey aluminum LTE watch on T mobile network.
After I set it up at the Apple store, I turned off the iphone and the AW3 worked on Cellular network right away. I was thrilled!!

When I got home, I pulled the SIM card out of the iPhone and I turned the phone off. I inserted the SIM card in my Galaxy S6.
The AW3 still works great!
So yes, If you have both an iphone and an Android phone, you can use the iphone to set up the watch initially and then wear the watch while you carry the android phone. But how long the battery will last is to be determined...

Interesting; thanks for the post. I am considering a similar strategy, although not with an android phone but with my iPhone 6s+, which is jailbroken on 9.3.3; I will not give it up. I've been thinking about using the strategy you employed to set my watch up with a phone at the Apple store until I get the iPhone X.

 

[zerolight]

The issue you have with this is that aside from the LTE call functionality, you lose all the interaction between phone and watch, notifications, etc.

 

[bandrews]

The issue you have with this is that aside from the LTE call functionality, you lose all the interaction between phone and watch, notifications, etc.

Surely notifications come via LTE now rather than pushed from the phone?

 

[edhchoe]

Surely notifications come via LTE now rather than pushed from the phone?

There may be both kinds. Some will come directly and some will get pushed.

 

[5105973]

I had wondered if something like this could be done. I won't have my new Apple Watch until October 5 th. Let us know how this works out for you over the next few days.

 

[edhchoe]

I turned the hot spot on the galaxy and connected iphones to it. Then i turned off the iphone. The watch is now on the hotspot connection. So if you have a lot of battery on the android phone or if you have car/wall charger for it, you can save the battery on the watch by turning off cellular on the watch and connecting it to the android hotspot.
The watch can do everything except for making a call but that's a known issue right now which needs to be fixed

 

[shenfrey]

Text messages will come through via LTE but any app notifications will obviously be pushed. So you will still need an iPhone if you are to get the most out of the watch.

 

[edhchoe]

Text messages will come through via LTE but any app notifications will obviously be pushed. So you will still need an iPhone if you are to get the most out of the watch.

The iphone will be on wifi at home. It will push notifications.

 

[madgalaxy]

This is good to hear because sometimes I just want to use my Pixel! I never cared for smartwatch offerings on Android and IMO the Apple Watch is the BEST smartwatch out there.

 

[fischersd]

Yeah, continuity items that are forwarded from the iPhone to the watch won't work. If the texts are sent via the carrier then they should still go to the watch, but will iMessages?
Facetime audio?
Also, the watch expects to sync health data with the iPhone.

I think you're going to run into a few "gotcha's" but it's an interesting experiment.

 

[edhchoe]

Yeah, continuity items that are forwarded from the iPhone to the watch won't work. If the texts are sent via the carrier then they should still go to the watch, but will iMessages?
Facetime audio?
Also, the watch expects to sync health data with the iPhone.

I think you're going to run into a few "gotcha's" but it's an interesting experiment.

I own both phones and that's why I got an AW3. I can review my activities and all each day. If I owned only an Android... I would not have bought a AW.
imessages work with the iphone off and the watch tethered onto my android phone or on LTE.

 

[edhchoe]

I just made a call on my watch via T-Mobile LTE while my iphone is turned off and the SIM is card in my android phone.!

T mobile must have corrected the problem.

*happy*

 

[edhchoe]

Someone just called me and I had my watch on silent mode. so I didn't hear it but I saw it because I was playing with the watch. and my Android phone didn't ring for some reason and I answered the call with my watch. and I talked to the person and hung up after like a minute and then when I looked at my Android phone it said I had missed the phone call. so I don't know how this works but the Android phone doesn't think that I answered the call while I was on the phone with the person on the watch. Interesting...

 

[fischersd]

Someone just called me and I had my watch on silent mode. so I didn't hear it but I saw it because I was playing with the watch. and my Android phone didn't ring for some reason and I answered the call with my watch. and I talked to the person and hung up after like a minute and then when I looked at my Android phone it said I had missed the phone call. so I don't know how this works but the Android phone doesn't think that I answered the call while I was on the phone with the person on the watch. Interesting...

Does your Android phone support VoLTE?
Also, you shouldn't be able to receive texts on the Apple Watch with the iPhone turned off (at least with AT&T - not sure if the other carriers implemented it in the same way).
Routing of the inbound texts is done via iCloud only for the iPhone - if they would have allowed the carriers to send these directly to both devices, it would have resulted in a lot of duplicate messages.