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Can the Apple Watch connect to public wi-fi and then leave my iPhone at home?

S

sofakng

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 5, 2008
270
32
Is it possible to leave my iPhone at home (connected to my home wifi) or in my car (connected to cellular), and then only bring my watch to a public wifi access point and still receive notifications and make phone calls, etc?

For example, I'm thinking that if I go to an amusement park it would be great to leave my phone in the car all day (or in a locker), and only take the watch but still see when people are calling or make a call in an emergency...
 
sofakng said:
Is it possible to leave my iPhone at home (connected to my home wifi) or in my car (connected to cellular), and then only bring my watch to a public wifi access point and still receive notifications and make phone calls, etc?

For example, I'm thinking that if I go to an amusement park it would be great to leave my phone in the car all day (or in a locker), and only take the watch but still see when people are calling or make a call in an emergency...
Click to expand...

No. I'm not sure what the deal is with that aspect of the watch, but if it's a software fix, I assume Apple will do it.
 
AustinIllini said:
No. I'm not sure what the deal is with that aspect of the watch, but if it's a software fix, I assume Apple will do it.
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Really not desirable.

What you're talking about doing is establishing a secure tunnel over multiple public and private networks (including your cellular provider).

The latency to do this over the internet would make the experience horrible most of the time (every now and then you would get a short route).
 
OK - Thanks.

I wasn't really concerned about the latency, but I thought it would just be nice to use the watch without the phone. For example, if a notification took an extra 10 seconds to reach me that would be fine.
 
fischersd said:
Really not desirable.

What you're talking about doing is establishing a secure tunnel over multiple public and private networks (including your cellular provider).

The latency to do this over the internet would make the experience horrible most of the time (every now and then you would get a short route).
Click to expand...

I don't buy this for a second. Make the watch independent of the iPhone when on Wi-Fi. When we get the full watch apps, we'll see the nature of the implementation.
 
AustinIllini said:
I don't buy this for a second. Make the watch independent of the iPhone when on Wi-Fi. When we get the full watch apps, we'll see the nature of the implementation.
Click to expand...

For the standalone apps, sure, but for the apps that the iPhone does all of the "heavy lifting", the response times wouldn't be great.

The watch isn't as robust as the phone - can't be with the space and battery limitations. This was intended to be an iPhone accessory.
 
The key issue from my perspective is that the phone would need a data plan and cellular connection of its own when the phone and watch cannot be on the same wifi network. I'm not game for another cellular charge.
 
FamiliaPhoto said:
The key issue from my perspective is that the phone would need a data plan and cellular connection of its own when the phone and watch cannot be on the same wifi network. I'm not game for another cellular charge.
Click to expand...

I think they're talking about the situation of:

- Watch is on Wi-Fi
- Phone is on either Cellular or Wi-Fi, but not the local network of the watch (and not in bluetooth range)
 
No, your iPhone would need to connect to the Wifi network first and then your Watch would connect. You could then leave the phone in your car or wherever with BT OFF, and you could use the Watch to make calls, receive messages etc AS LONG as you remain connected to the same Wifi network that the phone in the car was connected to.
 
This is why the Watch can only pull iMessages without your phone. It's a baked in app calling for info directly from a support services. My colleague left his phone at home and was getting all iMessages through. Nothing else worked properly though.
 
I accidentally left my phone at home today and to my surprise my watch connected to my works wifi without me doing a thing. I was able to send and recieve iMessages and use Siri to dictate. I was in complete shock and extremley pleased that this was possible!
 
Why can't we log into wifi on our watches if it reads wifi anyway. By the way you can make calls and text on watch if you leave your phone at home but are at a friends house where your phone has been connected?
 
public wifi is a no no!

man in the middle attacks are crazy easy that way.

(pretend to be your dhcp server, or worse acting as a reflector to the real wifi and collecting your data.)
 
I'm sure this is doable but it would hurt apples bottom line. They want you to own both a watch and a phone. Making the watch less dependent on the phone means less phone sales which isn't good for business.
 
This would only work for regular WiFi networks that are only protected by password. Something like a Hotel WiFi where one has to authenticate via a website wouldn't work I bet.
 
TouchMint.com said:
I'm sure this is doable but it would hurt apples bottom line. They want you to own both a watch and a phone. Making the watch less dependent on the phone means less phone sales which isn't good for business.
Click to expand...

They have to be on the same wifi network to work. Don't think it's doable.
 
TouchMint.com said:
I'm sure this is doable but it would hurt apples bottom line. They want you to own both a watch and a phone. Making the watch less dependent on the phone means less phone sales which isn't good for business.
Click to expand...

This was the same argument made against the iPad, and then against the iPad mini. I think Apple has solidly proven that they can sell us as many devices as they want to and the total profit from it will far exceed any cannibalization.
 
michael31986 said:
Why can't we log into wifi on our watches if it reads wifi anyway. By the way you can make calls and text on watch if you leave your phone at home but are at a friends house where your phone has been connected?
Click to expand...

Your watch will connect to wifi networks on its own that your iPhone has in its list of known networks (some may have to be forgotten and re-added to work - that's a bug).

iMessage and Siri on the watch should work, but you won't be able to connect to the iPhone at home. There may be some applications that WOULDN'T suck over such a connection - we'll see if Apple chooses to open that up (they could establish a secure tunnel through the cloud to make that work securely).
 
fischersd said:
Your watch will connect to wifi networks on its own that your iPhone has in its list of known networks (some may have to be forgotten and re-added to work - that's a bug).

iMessage and Siri on the watch should work, but you won't be able to connect to the iPhone at home. There may be some applications that WOULDN'T suck over such a connection - we'll see if Apple chooses to open that up (they could establish a secure tunnel through the cloud to make that work securely).
Click to expand...

I could have sworn people have tried it and were able to make phone calls over the wifi at someone elses's house.. hmm.
 
michael31986 said:
what do you mean no calls. you can leave your phone at home and go to a friends house where your iPhone has used its wifi and make calls. no?
Click to expand...

No calls currently. If Apple added FaceTime we'd be able to use that to make calls over wifi.
 
flur said:
No calls currently. If Apple added FaceTime we'd be able to use that to make calls over wifi.
Click to expand...

I suspect there was an issue with the VOIP stack in the Watch OS. That may be why the walkie-talkie app was cut.

I'm hoping it was simply a "there wasn't enough time to make launch" circumstance, and not pressure from one of the major telco carriers.
 
fischersd said:
I suspect there was an issue with the VOIP stack in the Watch OS. That may be why the walkie-talkie app was cut.

I'm hoping it was simply a "there wasn't enough time to make launch" circumstance, and not pressure from one of the major telco carriers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm hoping they sort this and add it as a software update. It could be a pretty killer feature.
 
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