The Wifi capabilities on the Apple Watch don't seem to work as well as I'd hoped. It's like it doesn't even work at all actually. There's no way to verify if your Watch is actually working on the Wi-Fi or not. There's so many qualifications. Why don't they tell us which Wi-Fi is already ruled out? I get the impression that mostly all public Wifi is ruled out including work and school wifi. Those large requirements: 1. The Wi-Fi network has to be 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz. How do you verify that? And who's going to verify that? 2. Apple Watch won't connect to 5GHz Wi-Fi or public networks that require logins, subscriptions, or profiles. So that's pretty much ALL public networks including Starbucks and the like. :/
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Clarifying how Apple Watch Works on Wi-Fi
- Thread starter nouveau-apple
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Does it matter? If compatible wifi is available the AW will take advantage of it. If not, it'll connect via Bluetooth.
Well yeah, cause what I'm trying to get to is I think it only works on home networks. And what good is that really. Sigh.
I just wanted to confirm.
It takes the wifi information from your phone. So you connect to the 2.4ghz network and that's handed off to the watch.
It works on home networks and most work networks. Essentially, it will most likely work in the places you might walk away from your phone. (It won't work on work networks that authenticate through something like Active Directory, but there are not as many of those.)
Even though the Starbucks network will not work, there probably is no universe where you would leave your phone on the table and walk more than 30' away from it. Ditto for most other WiFi networks that require a browser login or T&C acceptance. Those will not likely be in places where you would walk away from your phone.
The one use case I recall where the WiFi is a limitation is a gym, where you might leave your phone in a locker but wear the watch. Gyms that have a browser-based authentication hose the phone.
Even though the Starbucks network will not work, there probably is no universe where you would leave your phone on the table and walk more than 30' away from it. Ditto for most other WiFi networks that require a browser login or T&C acceptance. Those will not likely be in places where you would walk away from your phone.
The one use case I recall where the WiFi is a limitation is a gym, where you might leave your phone in a locker but wear the watch. Gyms that have a browser-based authentication hose the phone.
And what I'm trying to get at is it doesn't really matter when you're out and about, because you'll have your iPhone with you anyway and it'll connect via Bluetooth. There's only so much you can currently do without the iPhone. The home and perhaps the workplace might be the only places where you might leave your iPhone in one place.
As someone mentioned, gyms that require authentication via a website won't work anyway.