WatchOS 6 Question

[CrashTestWalrus]

I had a question for anyone running the WatchOS 6 Beta. I was looking at the new cellular watches and it states that they can text and call without being near the paired iPhone. That used to come with a disclaimer that text messages, green bubble, required the paired iPhone to be powered on and connected to the network. I don’t see that disclaimer anywhere on the web page now, so I thought they may have finally added the ability for the watch to send text messages directly. So the question is this, can you send text messages and receive them with the iPhone powered off?

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Did not work for me, iMessage worked fine with the phone off, text messages didn't come through until the phone was turned on.

 

[CrashTestWalrus]

Did not work for me, iMessage worked fine with the phone off, text messages didn't come through until the phone was turned on.

Thanks for checking. I remember when the series 4 was released last year the website said something similar and I had already ordered a cellular Nike+ one so I was pretty excited. By the time I received the watch, Apple updated the website to explicitly call out that the phone was needed for texting. So I suspect something similar will happen here. It’s somewhat frustrating that they won’t enable that functionality, though. The phone can text using the wifi calling, which tells me that it is possible for any device using that functionality to also text and the relaying the messages through the phone isn’t technically necessary but is being done as a design choice.