S6 without iPhone

[CLB]

First the disclaimer - I know this is not a practical use case. I am only posting for entertainment and to a much lesser extent information.

On October 16 I ordered 12 Pro's for the Wife and I at the Verizon booth at our local Costco. Still no phones for what that's worth. The same day I picked up a stainless 44mm S6 and figured it could sit in a drawer for a few days until the phones arrived. I knew couldn't set it up with my S7 Edge and Wifey's 6+ won't support iOS 14.

The retired engineer with too much time on his hands got bored after a few days and realized his 91YO mom had newer hardware. I paired the watch with her phone and set it up as a family member. I turned off all functionality involving notifications that I could so the link wouldn't continuously bother her. I did set the watch up on/for my personal Apple account.
After a few hours I decided to try another experiment. I turned off WiFi and Bluetooth on the watch and then un-paired the watch with her phone. The process terminated in error stating that I must reset the watch to complete the process. I have not done that yet.
The watch no longer appears in her watch app. I logged in to my iCloud account and removed the watch from "Family Sharing".

The watch still thinks it's a family member on her account (not having been reset) but her phone has no connection to it. Text messages my son sends to my Apple account show up on the watch. Email to my iCloud show up fine but no other email accounts. Things like ECG don't work as I still have no iPhone, let alone a health app. The Verizon account will not exist until the phones arrive so I do not currently have a cellular connection. Any connectivity depends on WiFi for now.
Speaking of WiFi, the watch updated to 7.1 today with no interaction with an iPhone. On the watch I went to Settings/General/Software Update and initiated the process. I set the watch down on the charger and it was running 7.1 by the time I checked back on it.

The watch seems to be able to provide some reduced functionality without being paired, floating in space or whatever.
It will be reset and paired, connected to cellular etc when/if my phone arrives. For now it's kept me amused.
I will post again on this thread if I have any issues resetting and pairing when my phone arrives.

 

[johnmed]

I sold my paired X before getting my 12 Pro. Without the X the Cellular AW wouldn’t iMessage or access the internet, but would make phone calls. Was odd.

I got so annoyed I tried setting up using family sharing with wife and son’s iPhones but it wouldn’t work, kept me in a set up loop.

I gave in and bought (and then sold) an SE 1st gen’ to get AW functionality back....

Impressed that you danced around the same issue with more success!

 

[Apple_Robert]

I sold my paired X before getting my 12 Pro. Without the X the Cellular AW wouldn’t iMessage or access the internet, but would make phone calls. Was odd.

I got so annoyed I tried setting up using family sharing with wife and son’s iPhones but it wouldn’t work, kept me in a set up loop.

I gave in and bought (and then sold) an SE 1st gen’ to get AW functionality back....

Impressed that you danced around the same issue with more success!

I bet you won’t make that mistake again. Lol

 

[CLB]

I sold my paired X before getting my 12 Pro. Without the X the Cellular AW wouldn’t iMessage or access the internet, but would make phone calls. Was odd.

I got so annoyed I tried setting up using family sharing with wife and son’s iPhones but it wouldn’t work, kept me in a set up loop.

I gave in and bought (and then sold) an SE 1st gen’ to get AW functionality back....

Impressed that you danced around the same issue with more success!

I double checked and the watch is indeed removed from the setup phones watch app, Apple account and Find My.

It's a cellular model but Verizon hasn't got me the 12 Pro's I ordered Oct 16 yet so no cellular on the watch yet. I tried a call with WiFi attached to see if it understood VOIP but no, just an error message.
I get mail from my iCloud address but cannot delete old mail without a paired phone. Old mail (deleted from the iPad) is stacking up.
No cool health app functions without being paired.
iMessage seems to work as intended.
iCloud contacts all sync and show on the watch - I just cannot call them.
OS updates can be started over WiFi and work fine.
Mickey's hand flys around in a circle at 1 revolution per hour.

Not sure what else to check. It's my first smart watch.
*I want my phone*