A basic Apple Watch question
October 24, 2022 12:49 PM Subscribe
Is it fair/accurate to say that a current (Series 8) Apple Watch GPS model has exactly the same functionality/capability as the equivalent current (Series 8) Apple Watch cellular model, if the GPS model is always (1) close to the paired iPhone or (2) on Wifi?
Put another way, is there anything the cellular model can do that the GPS model can't do (assuming we are talking about the same model of Apple Watch of course) even if the GPS model is always close to the paired iPhone or on wifi?
Bonus question: if you are a Verizon subscriber in the US, is it really just $10 per month to add the cellular plan for the cellular Apple Watch, or are there additional recurring monthly fees? (I'm aware there's an activation fee.)
Some more details:
- Please assume the paired iPhone and/or wifi is always available (I know that's not always the case, but for the purposes of this question)
- I'm asking for family members who have already decided on this particular product, so not looking for pros/cons of Apple Watches or smartwatches in general -- just trying to understand the GPS vs. cellular part of it
Put another way, is there anything the cellular model can do that the GPS model can't do (assuming we are talking about the same model of Apple Watch of course) even if the GPS model is always close to the paired iPhone or on wifi?
Bonus question: if you are a Verizon subscriber in the US, is it really just $10 per month to add the cellular plan for the cellular Apple Watch, or are there additional recurring monthly fees? (I'm aware there's an activation fee.)
Some more details:
- Please assume the paired iPhone and/or wifi is always available (I know that's not always the case, but for the purposes of this question)
- I'm asking for family members who have already decided on this particular product, so not looking for pros/cons of Apple Watches or smartwatches in general -- just trying to understand the GPS vs. cellular part of it
You've got it - the only primary difference is the cell has the antenna to connect to additional networks. These cell signals can be used to get better/faster position information for GPS/mapping, but the GPS only phone can just grab this same information from its partnered phone. There are several downsides to the the cell connection: battery life is poorer and on wrist reception isn't always great.
We still got the cell version as I anticipate that phones will continue to grow in screen size and this version will allow the watch to do communications while the phone to be more of a secondary tablet
posted by zenon at 1:45 PM on October 24, 2022
We still got the cell version as I anticipate that phones will continue to grow in screen size and this version will allow the watch to do communications while the phone to be more of a secondary tablet
posted by zenon at 1:45 PM on October 24, 2022
I've had several generations of Apple Watches going back to release day. During the time that I had my one cellular model, the place I frequent for happy hour was doing content filtering-- basically blocking software updates, but with the effect that Apple News updates would rarely load, and more often than not, I would receive Messages on my Watch, but on my laptop or iPhone only after several more minutes, if at all. In the year or two that I had it, that's the only thing I remember being different between the two. I realize something could've changed since then, though.
I suspect that if I decide I want the stainless steel model again, I probably won't activate the cellular functionality. Like, you, I always have my iPhone with me.
posted by kimota at 1:49 PM on October 24, 2022
I suspect that if I decide I want the stainless steel model again, I probably won't activate the cellular functionality. Like, you, I always have my iPhone with me.
posted by kimota at 1:49 PM on October 24, 2022
I can confirm your bonus question. The monthly Verizon cost for a watch cellular plan is $10 plus the usual taxes and fees that are tacked on to all cellphone bills, about $4 for me in California.
Note that the watch gets it's own phone number assigned to it, but that number doesn't actually work, it's just for billing. The phone number that rings on the watch is the number of the iPhone that it it shares a plan with.
posted by Jawn at 1:53 PM on October 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Note that the watch gets it's own phone number assigned to it, but that number doesn't actually work, it's just for billing. The phone number that rings on the watch is the number of the iPhone that it it shares a plan with.
posted by Jawn at 1:53 PM on October 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
FYI, Visible.com (which is a sub-brand of Verizon) offers watch plans at $5/month
posted by soylent00FF00 at 2:26 PM on October 24, 2022
posted by soylent00FF00 at 2:26 PM on October 24, 2022
Confirming Jawn's reply, here in Massachusetts I'm paying $15.53 a month extra for my cell-enabled watch.
posted by mr vino at 3:21 PM on October 24, 2022
posted by mr vino at 3:21 PM on October 24, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
Here is one such example: turn off a wifi-only model and then move it to a location far from its previous position and its paired iPhone (so using the previous position as a first estimate of location is not helpful in obtaining a GPS fix, and its paired iPhone can't warm up the watch either), and then turn it on at a location where the wifi base station has never previously been seen by an Apple device with GPS (since you specified the device will always have a wifi-connection and Apple uses its GPS-enabled devices to build a database of the approximate locations of wifi base-stations and said database is used by Apple to provide a good initial position estimate to warm-up the GPS receivers in wifi-only watches).
posted by RichardP at 1:44 PM on October 24, 2022