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The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Dec 15, 2010
31,276
20,525
UK
Those who use their cellular and leave their phone at home sometimes. Do you switch off data when you have your phone with you or have you noticed no different if you have it on or off when you have your phone with you?
 
No reason to do so.

The watch only turns on its cellular radio if it cannot connect via wifi, and it only turns on wifi if it cannot connect via bluetooth to/through the paired phone.

If your phone is with you, the watch's wifi and cellular are off.
 
I don’t manually turn off LTE, no. Like said above, the LTE subsystem should (presuming the OS is working properly) be off unless the watch finds no available BT or WiFi signal. Only then does the LTE subsystem get powered up. You can see this by watching what the Watch does when removed from BT and WiFi... it takes a few moments for LTE to fire up and connect.
 
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I’ve tried on and off and see no difference in battery life. So leaving it on.
 
I have an Apple Watch series 4 and an iPhone XR. I never turn off cellular and battery life seems to be sufficient.
 
I do toggle cellular, but for a different reason. At home if I am working in the yard the cell signal is low enough that it really drains my battery if away from my phone. So I keep cellular off unless I have a need for it.
 
It doesn't really seem to impact battery life at all. It won't activate unless your phone is off, in airplane mode, or just out of range and you aren't near a previously connected wifi signal. Over a week of having my Series 5 watch I've used a whopping 3.6 mb on my watch so far with the cellular toggled on and battery easily last through 1 full day usually could probably get a second day.
 
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