Apple Watch 4 is a proper phone
by Volker Weber
I have been using Apple Watch 3 as a phone on LTE before. It's a nice way to receive a call when you are not close to your iPhone. But Apple Watch 4 is changing the game. When I call you on Watch 4, you cannot tell the difference between Watch and iPhone. Why is that? Apple has moved the microphone to the other side and made the speaker louder.
Comments
Arrghhh. My corporate carrier (Starhub) in Singapore doesn’t support the Watch. Their competitor Singtel seems to have an exclusive contract with Apple. 😢
Volker, could you please stop writing about the Apple Watch 4. I keep repeating to myself: "I do not need a new Apple Watch, I do not need a new Apple Watch, I do not need a new Apple Watch..." This is getting difficult with all your posts...
Felix: resistance is futile. Vowe is a good mother.
Can the cellular model of the Apple Watch 4 be used without a mobile plan and activating its cellular features? Asking for a friend (tm) who’s mobile operator does not yet support the Apple Watch but might in the near future and who does not want to miss out on the series 4.
Yes, of course. It asks you to activate your data plan and you can skip right over that. I encourage people to buy the LTE model, even if they don't want to use that feature right away. It's only an option on the aluminium models. The steel watches all come with LTE.
It's "just" a MultiSIM. Your carrier has to be able to provision it as eSIM and must support the QR code format that Apple uses to activate it.
Thanks, Volker.
Thanks for your watch insights, always appreciated. Apart from the microphone and speaker. Do you experience any other features or properties of the series 4 watch that makes it even more useable as "stand-alone" device compared to the series 3? Can you receive normal SMS messages without the phone. Or does the phone have to be ON and active somewhere remotely to relay the messages? ( i think this was the case with series 3, if I'm not wrong). Did the battery life change on LTE?
From my understanding the series 3 was never indented by apple as a "permanent" stand-alone tool, maybe this is shifting now a bit more?
I would like to find a reason to change my old applewatch 1 for a series 4, keeping in mind that I always carry my iPhone with me (even when I'm going to pee)
