Cellular question

[BenGoren]

ok...i have tried this many times when my phone has died and texting usually fails. (when i text an android phone)

SMS requires your phone to work as a relay. The way it works is that your phone receives the text message and then forwards it on to the watch; outgoing messages work the same way, in reverse: your watch sends the message to the phone which then sends it out to the cell towers via SMS.

The phone doesn’t have to be anywhere near the watch; they can be on opposite sides of the planet. But the phone has to be able to send and receive the SMS message in real time, and there has to be some sort of network connection (Internet, Bluetooth, whatever) that lets the phone and the watch talk to each other.

This is just for SMS; for iMessage, the watch just needs to be able to talk to Apple’s servers. Even if the phone is destroyed, the watch will still send and receive iMessage messages (provided it can talk to Apple’s servers). Similarly, a watch with an active cellular plan can place and receive phone calls regardless of the state of the phone it’s paired with.

This split personality runs through the watch. Some types of email accounts require the phone for relaying, but most the watch can work with directly. Some 2FA authenticators can work entirely on the watch, but most just use the watch as a front-end to the processing that’s done on the phone.

There’s very little rhyme nor reason to this. The CPU on the watch is more than capable of performing these tasks; a lot can be chalked up to developer laziness.

And the SMS requirement is baffling to me. It’s the same radios as for voice, and SMS is almost morse-code-level bandwidth; I can’t fathom a technical reason why the watch shouldn’t be able to send and receive texts directly. My best guess is that the SMS protocol is so primitive that it can’t deal with two devices tied to a single account. But, even then, that should be a straightforward fix by the telecomm engineers … which again means “developer laziness."

In fairness to those who sling code: it’s not that the programmers themselves are lazy. It’s that their multimillionaire overlords are too penny-pinching to let the programmers do their damned jobs.

b&

 

[eclipse01]

SMS requires your phone to work as a relay. The way it works is that your phone receives the text message and then forwards it on to the watch; outgoing messages work the same way, in reverse: your watch sends the message to the phone which then sends it out to the cell towers via SMS.

The phone doesn’t have to be anywhere near the watch; they can be on opposite sides of the planet. But the phone has to be able to send and receive the SMS message in real time, and there has to be some sort of network connection (Internet, Bluetooth, whatever) that lets the phone and the watch talk to each other.

This is just for SMS; for iMessage, the watch just needs to be able to talk to Apple’s servers. Even if the phone is destroyed, the watch will still send and receive iMessage messages (provided it can talk to Apple’s servers). Similarly, a watch with an active cellular plan can place and receive phone calls regardless of the state of the phone it’s paired with.

This split personality runs through the watch. Some types of email accounts require the phone for relaying, but most the watch can work with directly. Some 2FA authenticators can work entirely on the watch, but most just use the watch as a front-end to the processing that’s done on the phone.

There’s very little rhyme nor reason to this. The CPU on the watch is more than capable of performing these tasks; a lot can be chalked up to developer laziness.

And the SMS requirement is baffling to me. It’s the same radios as for voice, and SMS is almost morse-code-level bandwidth; I can’t fathom a technical reason why the watch shouldn’t be able to send and receive texts directly. My best guess is that the SMS protocol is so primitive that it can’t deal with two devices tied to a single account. But, even then, that should be a straightforward fix by the telecomm engineers … which again means “developer laziness."

In fairness to those who sling code: it’s not that the programmers themselves are lazy. It’s that their multimillionaire overlords are too penny-pinching to let the programmers do their damned jobs.

b&

Ok so i was correct then...thanks

 

[GDMcG]

Does your iPhone have to be powered on to make calls from an Apple Watch cellular? (activated with Verizon)

In a frustrating text convo with Verizon and they haven’t been much help.

If I power off my phone and try and make a call from the watch, I get a call failed error.

This recently happened on our AT&T Cellular Apple Watches. Tried unpairing and repairing and still Cellular wasn’t working and it ended up being a NumberSync issue on AT&T’s end. I figured this out once I turned my iPhone off and then attempted to call the actual cellular number of the paired Apple Watch and it worked ( but it’s not supposed to work this way if AT&T’s NumberSync is working) I ended up calling AT&T at 800.331.0500 and asked for 'Apple Watch Tech Support' Tech had to reset the number sync code (I assume the 5 digit code such as what is used for Android watches and tablets that Apple users never see) for cellular NumberSync to start working on the Apple Watches again. Once this was done AT&T tech had me power off the phones and it started working on the watches again as it should when I called my main cellular number. A positive side effect of the initial unpairing though was that “Live” tracking in Find My started working again for my wife’s iPhone. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[jwm_mwj]

One additional item worth mentioning, if you're testing NumberSync on the watch at home, you need to make sure WiFi is disabled in the watch control center (swipe up). After disabled, the adjacent cellular icon will show LTE and will allow calls with the phone off.