Connect to WiFi on LTE S3 - Quick Test Req

[jas07]

Hi Guys,

Could someone with a S3 LTE model that doesn’t have it currently connect to a data plan run a quick test for me, either go out of range or your iPhone or put the iPhone on airplane mode, does your watch connect to a known WiFi network and show as connected to WiFi in control centre on the watch?

Mine isn’t and I’m just trying to work out if it’s a software bug or a hardware issue, AppleCare have ran a diagnostic on the watch and said the hardware is showing as ok mind.

 

[steelo3232]

Hi Guys,

Could someone with a S3 LTE model that doesn’t have it currently connect to a data plan run a quick test for me, either go out of range or your iPhone or put the iPhone on airplane mode, does your watch connect to a known WiFi network and show as connected to WiFi in control centre on the watch?

Mine isn’t and I’m just trying to work out if it’s a software bug or a hardware issue, AppleCare have ran a diagnostic on the watch and said the hardware is showing as ok mind.

SAME THING here..... no LTE on (yet, Verizon having issues) and when I leave my desk and go out of range of my phone no WIFI

 

[Nugget]

Same for me, and I have LTE set up and working. The watch never connects to WiFi whether I have cellular enabled or disabled. Discussed in this thread.

 

[pcorrado]

Verizon ss model. Does connect fine on Wi-Fi.

 

[Nugget]

Verizon ss model. Does connect fine on Wi-Fi.

Did you set up as a new watch, or restore a backup from an older watch?

 

[pcorrado]

I restored. I forgot to mention that my cell service is active but turning the phone off connects it to my house Wi-Fi. Transition to cell service and back to Wi-Fi is also flawless.

 

[Nugget]

Interesting. I set up mine as a new watch. I wonder if that's a factor.

 

[pcorrado]

Might want to try forgettting the network on the phone and rejoining. It can get iffy at times.

 

[Nugget]

I spent a couple hours with Apple support this morning with mixed results. They had me reset the watch (set up as a new device, same as before) and that didn't help at all. We went through dozens of variations of forgetting the network and rejoining, while bluetooth was connected and while not connected. Nothing I hadn't done on my own -- but to satisfy their debugging.

I physically left wifi range and came back to wifi range with both devices and with just the watch. No joy. Still unable to connect the watch to wifi.

Then they asked me to remove the passphrase from my WiFi SSID. I wasn't willing to do that, since it would surely cause all sorts of confusion with my other devices. But, since my WiFi hardware makes it easy to run multiple networks, I created a second SSID with no passphrase.

That worked. The watch happily connected to that SSID.

Then I created a third SSID with a passphrase (WPA2, same as my main network) and the watch was able to connect to that as well.

Then I created a fourth SSID with WPA2 using the same passphrase as my main network (to see if there was some aspect of the passphrase that was causing problems). That also worked.

Then back to the main network -- nothing.

I tore down all the test networks but I left the one WPA2 network and for now I'm just connecting my phone and the watch to that network. So I'm functional, but we were still not able to figure out what's broken with my primary network. The support person is taking the issue to engineering and we've scheduled a call for Friday to regroup and see what engineering has been able to figure out.

There's nothing weird about my main SSID but for some reason the watch seems to resist learning it. I'm tempted to try wiping the watch and restoring from a backup of my Series 2 watch which doesn't have this problem. I'd also be interested in seeing if it would help not just forgetting the network from my phone but also trying to remove it from my iCloud Keychain syncing entirely. Seems like that might also be a factor.

For now, though, I'm not going to do anything because I'd like to be able to continue to reproduce the problem if Apple wants me to test anything else. Ironically, I don't want to inadvertently fix it and make it harder to debug the problem. I'm operational now with my temporary wifi network and that's enough for now.

It does seem like renaming your WiFi network might be a way to hack around the bug if anyone's interested in trying that.

 

[Nugget]

I figured out a thing today while dealing with the KRACK WiFi exploit. The thing that has been preventing my Apple Watch from connecting to my WiFi is 802.11r FT Roaming. If I disable that on my WLAN configuration the watch is able to connect. That's probably not the issue for most people, it's an esoteric feature found in business-class and prosumer WiFi, but it definitely seems to be what's going on with my network. I figured I should mention it in case that helps anyone else.