You should be able to make and receive calls even when you iPhone is completely powered off.
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LTE not receiving calls
- Thread starter rstark18
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It may be, but here in the UK that is how it has worked always. I also thought that was one of the selling points of the cellular watch?
My watch will receive and make calls whilst my phone is off (and the watch is on cellular). I get iMessages but for SMS the phone will need to be in to relay them.
Yeah with AT&T and number sync the phone has to be on and connected to cellular unfortunately. I never knew this until here recently.
I would assume there are more people out there with this problem who don't even know it. If you're not one to go without your phone much you would never know that your watch wasn't receiving calls through cellular. It just happened that I went out with my Ultra leaving my phone at home last weekend and I missed a call from my wife. Watch never rang, just a notification of a missed call. This was the first time I ran into this issue causing me to test further finding the watch would not receive cell calls, only make them. Bringing me here to this thread.
I just looked on AT&T’s website and it says with numbersync the phone does NOT have to be turned on.
https://www.att.com/features/numbersync/
This conflicts with what multiple agents told me. Hmmmmm.
https://www.att.com/features/numbersync/
This conflicts with what multiple agents told me. Hmmmmm.
Hmmmm... Doesn't make sense. Now that my watch has been fixed/reset I haven't tried turning my phone off and making a call. Before it was fixed when putting my phone in airplane mode the calls would go straight to voicemail. I'll have to give it a try when I get home from work today. Have you tried it?
So I was out to dinner last night and turned my phone completely off and had my wife call me. Watch rang like it should no issues.
This happened to me when I really needed to make a call from my AW7 with LTE. Call could not be completed. Further investigation showed I could not call or receive calls, but could text both ways. Our AW5 had the same problem on LTE.
Ended up unpairing both from iPhones including removing cellular plans. Re-paired both and re-added cellular plans. Now calls to and from on both with LTE are working perfectly.
Ended up unpairing both from iPhones including removing cellular plans. Re-paired both and re-added cellular plans. Now calls to and from on both with LTE are working perfectly.
I've had times where my cellualr AW has refused to connect to anything (from AirPods not connecting to refusing to dial 911) - doesn't happen very often but when it does it's really noticeable. In my case, doing a 2 button press and hold to hard reboot it fixed it for me.
Just to add a data point … I was entirely phone-less for about a week after I idiotically put my beloved Xs through the wash. The phone wasn’t merely off; it was completely dead. In the interim, I used my Ultra exclusively. (I’m on T-Mobile in the States.) The only things that didn’t work were SMS and a couple third-party apps which are nothing but Bluetooth-connected frontends to corresponding phone apps.
SMS is expected; the watch doesn’t speak SMS (for whatever incomprehensible reason) and instead uses your phone as a relay … so long as the phone can send and receive SMS, and there’s some sort of a network connection between the phone and the watch (even if on opposite sides of the planet), SMS will work. And iMessage just requires some sort of Internet connection between the watch and Apple’s servers.
If you have a cellular-enabled watch and can’t make and receive phone calls on the watch regardless of the state of the paired phone, there’s something worng. Maybe with the watch, maybe with the carrier … maybe a reboot will fix it, maybe the carrier needs to do something, maybe there’s physical damage, maybe it’s something else … but it’s not only supposed to work, it’s a major selling point, the entire reason why you pay more for cellular-enabled versions of the watch. Like buying a car with anti-lock brakes but still having to pump them to keep them from locking up. (Except I suppose all cars sold today have anti-lock brakes … so get off my lawn!)
b&
SMS is expected; the watch doesn’t speak SMS (for whatever incomprehensible reason) and instead uses your phone as a relay … so long as the phone can send and receive SMS, and there’s some sort of a network connection between the phone and the watch (even if on opposite sides of the planet), SMS will work. And iMessage just requires some sort of Internet connection between the watch and Apple’s servers.
If you have a cellular-enabled watch and can’t make and receive phone calls on the watch regardless of the state of the paired phone, there’s something worng. Maybe with the watch, maybe with the carrier … maybe a reboot will fix it, maybe the carrier needs to do something, maybe there’s physical damage, maybe it’s something else … but it’s not only supposed to work, it’s a major selling point, the entire reason why you pay more for cellular-enabled versions of the watch. Like buying a car with anti-lock brakes but still having to pump them to keep them from locking up. (Except I suppose all cars sold today have anti-lock brakes … so get off my lawn!)
b&
I completely agree. There is a trust issue now going out with the AW alone & find myself constantly testing it, although this is subsiding. I am thinking (hoping) something did not transfer correctly when T-Mobile finally transferred my account from Sprint.