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Apple Watch Series 3 Unlikely to Support Direct Phone Calls, but VoIP Calling a Possibility

Apple is not going to make the Apple watch convenient enough to replace your iphone until they feel they can make more money doing so.

They are either going to build in some teathering requirement or allow data carriers to charge the moon for connectivity.
 
Michael Scrip said:
Which people? Those who don't use ANY of the computing or consumption features of a smartphone?

And I thought the 4" iPhone SE screen was small... :)
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I think a lot of people can live without iPhone if they had a Watch + iPad combo or whatnot. Obviously they'd be the minority because iPhone has become the main computing device for most.

Anyways, the most exciting potential for Watch is the addition of new sensors to track and monitor our vitals. Apple will eventually democratize consumer healthcare.
 
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dontspeakeasy said:
I think a lot of people can live without iPhone if they had a Watch + iPad combo or whatnot. Obviously they'd be the minority because iPhone has become the main computing device for most.
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Ah I see.

Well you're not gonna carry an iPad with you all the time... so you'd be stuck with the tiny Apple Watch screen anytime you're out of the home. Which... I imagine... would be a lot of the time.

Even the largest smartphone can still fit in a pocket and be with you constantly. :p
 
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I wouldn't be interested in this, give me the iPhone non LTE tethered version and extra battery life please - but, its great to see this moving forward. The sport folks are going to love this though...no more dragging the phone along.

At some point if you could just talk to your watch as a primary (realistic) interface (to make calls, answer texts etc.) an LTE standalone version could be quite compelling for a larger market segment (don't want to carry a phone but only need a subset of its functionality)...but that seems years down the road.
 
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macduke said:
As for the data plan, I really hope it is something virtual where your watch just shares the same data plan as your phone. I'm not willing to buy a data plan for my watch, lol. That's crazy. Maybe someday when the watch can do a lot more if it's only $5/mo. But considering the limited data it would use anyway, it should just be included with service. If AT&T and Verizon charge for it, I could see T-Mobile offering it free with service to compete, which I would be fine with since I switched to them earlier this year.
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Currently they all charge for it. Not $5 either. From the link posted by MadeMyDay.

dontspeakeasy said:
Wow! How many units have they sold?
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Pretty sure the point of that link was to emphasize the ancillary costs of an LTE smartwatch.
 
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wizard said:
Seriously who really cares? They could come out with a new watch every 6 months or every 6 years and it wouldn't make a difference to me. To put it simply, nobody has to buy a new Apple product. Your life won't come to and end if you don't have the latest and greatest. If it does you have significant issues that needs addressing.
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I disagree. There are two sides of the story. Some people may not own one by now and may wait as a new one is around the corner (like me) or people looking for a new feature, e.g. some design tweaks (also me). Those people care. Others not aiming to buy one at all or happy with their current watch won't.
 
While phone calls via Apple Watch aren’t perfect nor ideal, I’ve used the feature a lot more than I thought I would — sometimes it’s more convenient to take or make a call on the watch, such as when driving with my iPhone in my pocket. I use voice calling on my watch many times / week.

But what I love are AirPods. Wouldn’t go back to EarPods for anything!
 
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They need a android support for the watch and not make it so dependent on having an iPhone if they want to really increase sales. It's like requiring a mac to have an iPhone. Imagine every how lack luster the sales of the iPhone would have been.
 
wizard said:
Eventually Watch will replace the iPhone for many people. I don't think the technology is there yet as you cant stuff enough computational capacity in the Watch and maintain battery life to provide the required services. But the day will come when Watch has the functionality most people need on the go.

Frankly beyond the power issue the other big problem is getting a handle on the AI tech that drives Siri. Watch would need to function much more cleanly in conjunction with Siri. But hey Apple is working on that too.
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Apple never intends to have the Apple Watch replace the iPhone. It would mean far far less money from them. They will keep the Apple Watch tethered to the iPhone because it helps keep people on iPhone. You can't switch to the Android if you want to keep your Apple Watch. This is also why they won't bother building an Android app for it.
 
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quietstormSD said:
They need a android support for the watch and not make it so dependent on having an iPhone if they want to really increase sales. It's like requiring a mac to have an iPhone. Imagine every how lack luster the sales of the iPhone would have been.
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The Apple Watch is intended to be dependent on the iPhone. It's an iPhone accessory. They don't want it to be a replacement.

With the Apple Watch, they get a couple hundred dollars and that's it. With the iPhone, they get several times that much money, plus they get a portion of your monthly bill from the carrier each month. The iPhone makes them tons more money.

Apple will never be able to integrate the Apple Watch with Android in the way they can with their own OS and that would make the Apple Watch largely useless with Android phones.

It's simply not going to happen.
 
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it's pretty obvious, it's for battery life reasons, phone call would require a constant upload/download connection over LTE, the watch will last maybe 1 or 2 hours of call time if they enabled that.

However notifications, send/receive text messages, occasional music streaming Apple can probably hit close to 8 hours (varying by usage of course).
 
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It's hard for me to be excited about LTE support right in Apple Watch when it's so hard to use it as a communications device. I have decent hearing, but even light environmental noise makes it really difficult to hear... and often, the person on the other side gets broken audio (I experience this myself when my wife answers my call on her Series 2).
 
dontspeakeasy said:
I think a lot of people can live without iPhone if they had a Watch + iPad combo or whatnot. Obviously they'd be the minority because iPhone has become the main computing device for most.
Click to expand...
There will always be a % of the population that won't wear a watch for any reason.

For those who do, I could see eventually most people having a watch + phablet (7"+ screens). A larger phone would be justifiable if it no longer has to be as portable (because watch) and with pencil (stylus) support and better creation apps that combo could kill the tablet/notebook for a lot of folks.
 
quietstormSD said:
They need a android support for the watch and not make it so dependent on having an iPhone if they want to really increase sales. It's like requiring a mac to have an iPhone. Imagine every how lack luster the sales of the iPhone would have been.
Click to expand...

While I agree with the theory... I'm not sure how it would work in practice.

I can't imagine what sorcery Apple would have to do to make an Apple Watch interface with the multitude of Android phones.

This isn't like writing a mass-storage driver for Windows to make an iPod work on a PC.

The Apple Watch is the epitome of the tightly integrated "Apple Ecosystem"

Besides... Android smartwatches haven't been flying off the shelves... and they're native.

I'm not sure this would even be a market for Apple.
 
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"Who wants to pay for a data plan to use their watch? Yuck!"

That's what I'd hope someone at Apple would say while introducing an LTE Apple Watch. Then they would go on about how you can use your new AW with your phone's data plan— automatically and seamlessly.

Any other implementation would be a disappointment IMO.
 
RangerOne said:
It's hard for me to be excited about LTE support right in Apple Watch when it's so hard to use it as a communications device. I have decent hearing, but even light environmental noise makes it really difficult to hear... and often, the person on the other side gets broken audio (I experience this myself when my wife answers my call on her Series 2).
Click to expand...

Granted the Watch is capable of handling phone calls, but I think the Speaker is fairly decent for what it's worth where it's loud enough. I have actually been impressed with the speaker and the sounds that can emanate from it. But overall with its usefulness with the Speaker, is merely dependen on the environment that you're in.
 
Carriers have deprecated 2G and now Apple deprecates 3G. 4G is a stop-gap and 5G is the future of internet of things devices. Apple Watch is a sleeper IoT device BTW. When it moves beyond the wrist to headless devices we will see big sales growth.

It's actually a micro-mini (portless) computer. Swarms don't even need a display. That's what a phone/pad is for.
 
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