Hacker News Reader

Comment by supermatt | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone understand why Apple Watch only works with some mobile networks? I have an LTE version, but it’s not “supported” by any networks in my country. I’ve owned it for many years and it’s not really useful unless in proximity of the phone. I’d love to be without phone and perform simple productivity tasks, “queries”, etc.

View on HN

> I have an LTE version

LTE is not one thing. It's a bunch of different radio frequency bands that are selectively used by different networks in different countries.

Because of that, cross-network phone interoperability is a consumer nightmare of technical minutia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands

I don’t think it’s the only reason but the Watch doesn’t have a SIM slot. It requires you use Apple’s “eSIM” standard and a lot of networks haven’t adopted it.

As others have pointed out, it’s probably the carrier that does not support the right kind of E-Sim.

But furthermore, an Apple Watch with cellular bought in the US, cannot use cellular data in e.g. the EU. Not sure why, but it must be localized on a software/hardware (?) level. At least that’s what the Apple genius told me on my last visit to the states..

The LTE bands are different.

Your carrier needs support for eSIM, which may be the holdup.

I’m not sure it’s so straightforward. There are networks that support eSIM for other devices. Maybe this is an Apple partnership issue, rather than a technology one?

It has to be more than that because Google Fi doesn’t seem to support them.

Google Fi doesn't seem to support any kind of watches or tablets like other carriers do, they probably don't have the billing infrastructure to support it (why that is, considering it's Google, I don't know).

E-sim instead of physical sim I would presume?

Yeah. I don’t think there’s a physical sim option?

Nope, e-sim only and only with select providers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com