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Apple Watch Series 3 Limited to 3G-Like Speeds on T-Mobile [Update: Now 4G LTE]
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The $10.00 fee is not exclusive to Apple. That is the same price that carriers charge for Samsung wearables that have cellular capability.
And as far as downloading music to your watch over cellular; Apple never stated this was an option, only streaming was.
And as far as downloading music to your watch over cellular; Apple never stated this was an option, only streaming was.
TMO is still the best game in town. thanks to the free line promo and milking a new customer promo from an affiliate, i get 5 lines unlimited everything for $140/mo taxes/fees included. no roaming in canada when we visit relatives in toronto and montreal. now we get free netflix too. this isn't great news for the new apple watch, but i'm sure it will work itself out in the near future.
I think this is exactly why they did it. Not going to use a lot of data bandwidth with just streaming music. Who cares if it’s streamed on a 1gb pipe or whatever the network speeds are at this month?
No it isn’t lol. I’d gladly switch back to AT&T once it comes to its senses and begins to offer reasonable plans.
I’ve been on T-Mobile for 6 months. Coverage outside is great. Walk in a building and it turns to crap. Same areas with AT&T didn’t exhibit these problems.
Band 12 fixed all of that for me. in my area i used to not have coverage inside of brick and stone structures. my house is a double wyeth brick wall. used to get 0 bars. now i get 3 bars. no need for wifi calling but i still use the feature.
do you have Band 12 in your area?
Good point. I failed to think of that. Suffice to say, if I had the LTE Series 3 model, I would just want to continue receiving iMessages and phone calls when I'm away from my phone.
You know that streaming is just another way to say download, right?
Not at all the same. When I download a song the file stays on the device and it is available to play offline. When I stream a song, the song is played as the data is downloading and the data is not stored beyond what is need to buffer ahead a little bit.
Netflix for example makes a distinction between titles that can be streamed only, and titles that can be streamed and/or downloaded.
Also, downloading can occur on a slow connection because you will access the content at a later time. Streaming must have sufficient bandwidth to keep up with the rate that the data is being presented to the user.
It's a big difference.
One interesting thing though is that T-Mobile appears to be the only US carrier currently offering the cellular Apple Watch attached to a prepaid plan ("T-Mobile ONE No Credit Check" plan that costs $75/month), but it's $15/month rather than $10/month.
Go stream a podcast. The full podcast downloads in seconds. You can see the download complete. You just aren't keeping it for offline playback. The only difference between streaming and downloading is one of them keeps it for you afterwards and the other deletes it immediately after you're done. There is no difference in how the network is used. By throttling the speeds, T-Mobile is forcing the LTE signal to be active for longer, therefore reducing battery life.
With that limitation in place it should be $5 or free each month. Looks like all 4 carriers are being ridiculous with the pricing for data on these things.
In a utopian world the FTC would mandate that data you pay for can be used on any device you have without restriction, but instead we get anti-customer behavior like this. Legere was apparently only a man of the people while he needed to get his subscriber numbers up. Will have to rethink my plan with them.
No you're not. 512Kbps is 0.5Mbps. For reference, you need 5.0Mbps to stream HD video on Netflix, which is 10x the speed.
At 512Kbps is barely higher than high quality audio which is around 320Kbps.
It's not about speed snobs. It's about battery life and buffering of audio. With full speed, you can download a song within several seconds, allowing for the LTE modem to then be in a power save mode. By limiting it to 512Kbps you're basically forcing the watch to keep a constant stream of data going for at least half the song, plus it will take that much longer to play after you press play while it buffers.
I don’t know but I will check. It’s been frustrating to put it lightly. I accept it only because we are paying much less for our shared plan.
Don't understand the reason for that.
Even if a person streams music, there are more people using phones to stream music than a watch.
Doesn't make sense.
Also does anyone know if you activate the watch and pay the activation fee, use the service a few months and then stop. Will you have to pay another activation fee later if you want to start the service back up?
Even if a person streams music, there are more people using phones to stream music than a watch.
Doesn't make sense.
Also does anyone know if you activate the watch and pay the activation fee, use the service a few months and then stop. Will you have to pay another activation fee later if you want to start the service back up?
MR, I believe you are wrong. Apple Watch is added to your T-Mobile account as a DIGITS line - not as a smart watch. If it was on the smart watch plan, it would have its own phone number. DIGITS lines are phone devices that share a number and do NOT have throttled data.
EDIT: After reviewing T-Mobile’s site, DIGITS with Paired Data (which is the plan used) is on a 512 Kbps throttle. While I don’t see the point, what’s the problem? All you can do in terms of cellular data on the Watch is Maps, Music, Messages, and 3rd party apps.. I think 512 Kbps will be plenty for that. You’re not streaming 4K HDR movies on the damn thing.
EDIT: After reviewing T-Mobile’s site, DIGITS with Paired Data (which is the plan used) is on a 512 Kbps throttle. While I don’t see the point, what’s the problem? All you can do in terms of cellular data on the Watch is Maps, Music, Messages, and 3rd party apps.. I think 512 Kbps will be plenty for that. You’re not streaming 4K HDR movies on the damn thing.
Use your noggins. ... Times change.
Obviously AT&T learned something with the unlimited data plan of the original iPhone. ... Mine are still grandfathered in, and I use a lot of data. (And I really do mean, A very large amount of data runs through my unlimited data iPhone)
Just because we only expect the watches to use a limited amount of data today, does not mean that tomorrow will have the same data requirements today has.
Obviously AT&T learned something with the unlimited data plan of the original iPhone. ... Mine are still grandfathered in, and I use a lot of data. (And I really do mean, A very large amount of data runs through my unlimited data iPhone)
Just because we only expect the watches to use a limited amount of data today, does not mean that tomorrow will have the same data requirements today has.
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U tmobile guys with your excuses , obviously calls gonna sound better and it's gonna have better service