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For many people, the $10-$15 per month surcharge that the carriers collect for the ‘privilege’ of allowing an Apple Watch to have access to the same data bucket you’re already paying for is a waste of money given how infrequently many people seem to use their Apple Watch over the cellular network.
 
I may not have understood the AW4 and cellular abilities properly, but I thought your phone still needed to be turned on and available via cell or WiFi for the Apple Watch’s cell phone abilities to work. The phone didn’t need to be close, but wherever it is it needed to be on and connected to either a cell or a WiFi network.

Biggest reason I didn’t get the cell enabled watch, and if I’m wrong then an Apple Store sales person blew the explanation and cost them a little money as I would have canceled the cell service for my iPad and used it instead for the watch. But if the phone has to be on I didn’t think it was worth the money or the cell cost.
The phone doesn’t need to be turned on.
Greets.
 
Exactly how I felt when I started going out smartphone-free.

For me, all that’s missing to feel completely free of a phone is a camera. I’m a photographer and often carry my Sony a9 with me but there are situations where I’m without my camera and things come up that would be useful to photograph. And not just from an artistic standpoint. We rely on always having a camera with us as a reminder for something, to archive ideas, to protect us or others in legal situations, or to just capture a funny or amazing moment.

I’m due for an update from my Series 3 this year or next. I’d love it if the new Watch has a camera. A fisheye camera could be made multi functional with computational photography. One front facing camera could work for FaceTime but also to shoot other things by pointing your watch face at the subject and have it capture the entire scene, later cropping and flattening the part of the scene you meant to capture.

But I have a hunch that this is a need that’ll be filled with the Apple Glasses, rather than on the wrist.
 
Not going to pay extra to be able to talk via watch - i already have a phone, and when exercising nothing is so important that i have to answer to a call. If i know that i must be able to answer, i can carry my phone with me.. otherwise, the phone stays at home when im out.

Until i can replace my phone with a watch entirely, then i can get a cellular version of the watch and ditch my phone...
^^^THIS^^^

The commercial didn't make a lot of sense to me.
 
Yeah but it took them 4 iterations of crap and it’s still not cloud based without iPhone.
Apple has become a joke but the consumers seems to love half baked products.
Man, I wish I’d realized earlier that my S3 is crap! I wouldn’t have enjoyed using it so much.

Also, only one gen of AirPods. Selective reading much? Some Apple products have issues. Most are still fantastic. Only joke here is your Enlighted One attitude.
 
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Still can't stream Apple Music, I was really disappointed of not supporting this but at least they should have made it where I can browse my playlist and let me pick the song and control the Music app with my watch and play from there to my AirPods. I hate synching those playlist and got stuck with only music synched with my watch while my phone is in the locker while working out in the gym. So if I decide to play a song that is not stored in my watch I have to freakin go back and grab my phone which is annoying having the phone around switching workouts.
 
Most of the replies from users who can't justify the extra cost of the cellular connection. However speaking as someone who did opt for the cellular connectivity...it never f*%king works. I've tested it areas where i don't have good coverage to begin with (that's to be expected) but other places where I have 5 bars and pulling down 40mbps on phone speed tests, the watch still will not connect to cellular. The only reason that I keep paying the $15/month is that I'm technically not. Every time that bill comes in I call my carrier about the watch never connecting and get my $15 back!
 
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Just kinda works. Run in an area with poor reception, run back to area with good coverage, and it wont reconnect by itself at all (Apple Music).
 
Most of the replies from users who can't justify the extra cost of the cellular connection. However speaking as someone who did opt for the cellular connectivity...it never f*%king works. I've tested it areas where i don't have good coverage to begin with (that's to be expected) but other places where I have 5 bars and pulling down 40mbps on phone speed tests, the watch still will not connect to cellular. The only reason that I keep paying the $15/month is that I'm technically not. Every time that bill comes in I call my carrier about the watch never connecting and get my $15 back!

Mine and many others works flawlessly. Have you ever thought about trying to find out why yours doesn't or are you ok with it not working so long as you get your money back each month?
 
For many people, the $10-$15 per month surcharge that the carriers collect for the ‘privilege’ of allowing an Apple Watch to have access to the same data bucket you’re already paying for is a waste of money given how infrequently many people seem to use their Apple Watch over the cellular network.
This is my exact issue. I have LTE on my iPad, and even though I take advantage of it somewhat regularly, I can still barely justify the $14/mo that costs me. Especially when the reality is that I'm just paying that money to remove the hassle of toggling Hotspot on my phone and using both batteries while out (it's the same data pool). It also prevents me from upgrading my iPad as often because I hate paying the $130-150 surcharge for LTE when it has zero influence on iPad resale value.

I like the idea of upgrading my Series 2 watch to an LTE model, but the $100 upcharge and $14/mo just aren't worth it. It needs to be more like $5/mo total. Apple should try to strike a bargain with carriers. Without LTE, there isn't an incentive to upgrade from an older model so Apple loses a sale. And surely even $5/mo is plenty profitable to AT&T for a SIM that would get used so minimally; better to their bottom line than $0/mo.
 
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I didn't get any of the negativity of the ad. I was more curious about if she had a parachute on or not. :) I was thinking about if she was nervous the cameraman could pull his chute without her!!
Or maybe a CGI stage with a powerful fan.
 
Just kinda works. Run in an area with poor reception, run back to area with good coverage, and it wont reconnect by itself at all (Apple Music).
What carrier do you have?
Most of the replies from users who can't justify the extra cost of the cellular connection. However speaking as someone who did opt for the cellular connectivity...it never f*%king works. I've tested it areas where i don't have good coverage to begin with (that's to be expected) but other places where I have 5 bars and pulling down 40mbps on phone speed tests, the watch still will not connect to cellular. The only reason that I keep paying the $15/month is that I'm technically not. Every time that bill comes in I call my carrier about the watch never connecting and get my $15 back!
What carrier do you have?
 
Apple ads used to be better. What happened, did they change the marketing/ad team?

Of course they did.
They used to use one of the best ad agencies out there, now they created their own in-house agency,
which works like a corporation. It's huge with tons of layers and an anti-creative structure.
 
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The phone doesn’t need to be turned on.
Greets.

Correction: you can take calls with your Watch and the phone off but for green bubble SMS messages, the phone needs to be on because it acts as a relay. iMessages work without the phone because they just go through regular data.
 
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Here is my Qualm:

I actually could justify using LTE with the Apple Watch, however, I can’t justify the $15 it will cost me additionally on my carrier bill month with the added fee of $10 and taxes, and to me, that’s more than I’m willing to spend just for the sake of having some notifications and other features. I really would like to see Apple and the carriers corroborate to implement some type of plan that would be more attractive to the user.

If you think about how expensive cellular monthly bills are already, and then you add another $12 to $13-ish on top of that, that’s not very attractive for something that somebody may infrequently use with the LTE function. I know it has its advantages for taking a call and leaving your phone behind, or streaming your music to your AirPods, etc. but I still wonder if the consumer wants to spend this type of money for something that they may not rely on as much as they think. And I think the additional cost can be offputting to want to take advantage of the LTE capability.


Ok —- and this anything to do with Apple?
Seriously - it’s virtually become a company that should just be 1000% fascist and run everything and give you fair rates none of you will complain about. God, I feel for some of your significant others that dare detract from towing the line
 
The answer to my Apple Watch 4 requires a phone to be on statement that stopped me from buying the full LTE version;

From the Apple Support website:
  1. To receive SMS from third-party apps, MMS from third-party apps, or push notifications from third-party apps on your cellular model of Apple Watch, your paired iPhone must be powered on and connected to Wi-Fi or cellular, but it doesn't need to be nearby. You also need to be signed in to iMessage on your iPhone
So it seems that only some 3rd party apps would require the phone, any Apple apps and probably most 3rd party ones would not.

I didn’t look earlier because I didn’t really care that much. I bought it so I knew if my wife or friends texted me while at work, and as a remote to control my phones camera. I frequently video machines at work to diagnose what is going on that happens to quick to see, especially with guards and light curtains protecting the moving parts.

My boss flys off the handle if he catches you using your phone for texting, so the watch let’s me see who it is and what they said at a glance.

As I said, if I had been told that the phone and most messaging apps didn’t require the phone at all I would have purchased that version. Since physical activity is not the reason I bought the phone it doesn’t particularly bother me that I need my phone near. I don’t need or want it enough to buy another watch with LTE and I doubt any new features are going to turn up to make me buy one next year. When I do buy a new one I will probably buy one with LTE. And tell Apple to train their store based sales staff better.
 
They shot two different endings. They were expecting the ending where she took the call to get the best reaction from the test audience but everyone probably asked why she would take a stupid call after having a transcendent experience and ending up surrounded by amazing nature.
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I agree the take off was lacking. I was expecting more walking on air turned into air dancing.

The reason there was no take off or landing was because the part in the clouds was done in a wind tunnel. The performer is flyer Inka Titto and the commercial was shot inside Flyspot, a vertical wind tunnel. The moves she does in the commercial are done in the air, so it looks different compared to simple green screen of dancing on the ground with clouds added in post production. Not sure why they didn't do breakdancing in the clouds though, as that would be way more relatable to more people. This kind of wind flying style isn't nearly as popular.
 
Here is my Qualm:

I actually could justify using LTE with the Apple Watch, however, I can’t justify the $15 it will cost me additionally on my carrier bill month with the added fee of $10 and taxes, and to me, that’s more than I’m willing to spend just for the sake of having some notifications and other features. I really would like to see Apple and the carriers corroborate to implement some type of plan that would be more attractive to the user.

If you think about how expensive cellular monthly bills are already, and then you add another $12 to $13-ish on top of that, that’s not very attractive for something that somebody may infrequently use with the LTE function. I know it has its advantages for taking a call and leaving your phone behind, or streaming your music to your AirPods, etc. but I still wonder if the consumer wants to spend this type of money for something that they may not rely on as much as they think. And I think the additional cost can be offputting to want to take advantage of the LTE capability.
With your comments I completely agree. My Apple Watch 3 LTE came with 90 day free trial of LTE, when that came to the end I cancelled the service. During that 90 days I may have used it a few times without the iPhone being with me. It did not take me long realizing my need for the camera on my iPhone. From then on the iPhone and watch were always within range. Also, as you very eloquently stated the cost is onerous, though I can afford the monthly cost there is for me not a compelling reason to spend the money.
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I may not have understood the AW4 and cellular abilities properly, but I thought your phone still needed to be turned on and available via cell or WiFi for the Apple Watch’s cell phone abilities to work. The phone didn’t need to be close, but wherever it is it needed to be on and connected to either a cell or a WiFi network.

Biggest reason I didn’t get the cell enabled watch, and if I’m wrong then an Apple Store sales person blew the explanation and cost them a little money as I would have canceled the cell service for my iPad and used it instead for the watch. But if the phone has to be on I didn’t think it was worth the money or the cell cost.
Yes, the phone must be on. With it on you can be anyplace on Earth (cell service available) then receive the call on the AW. My iPad has LTE, used LTE for a while then turned it off. My iPhone hotspot is excellent, connects fast, and with my carrier, T-Mobile, the speed is excellent, much better than many folks have with DSL.
 
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