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Comment by wilsonnb3 | Hacker News Reader

I last tried to ditch my phone and just wear the watch with a Series 4, so things might be different now, but you give up way too much compared to using a smartphone.

Only being able to take calls on speakerphone, not having access to the long tail of apps you might need on occasion, and not being able to effectively input text into the apps you do have are the biggest problems for me.

Its alright for the kids and old people thing they have now where you really want a life alert/GPS tracker combo and calling/texting is a nice bonus but the form factor isn't viable for solo use.

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> Only being able to take calls on speakerphone

I was under the impression that if you had AirPods, they would work for phone calls through the watch.

Can confirm: AirPods work for calls, music and podcasts.

You can but in practice this doesn't end up working well. By the time your airpod is out of your pocket, out of the case, in your ear, and connected to your watch, the call has stopped ringing.

If you are only worried about placing calls and not receiving them, it works better but you still have to contend with bluetooth, which is less than 100% reliable, being an essential component of your setup.

>"You can but in practice this doesn't end up working well. By the time your airpod is out of your pocket, out of the case, in your ear, and connected to your watch, the call has stopped ringing."

How is the form factor of this any different than when you connect AirPods to take a call on your iPhone? This exact order of premeditation prior to the action of taking a call is already commonplace if for the iPhone - why not for the Apple Watches too?

Well the difference is that I can hold my iPhone up to my ear to take a call in public, whereas the only options with the watch are airpods or speakerphone.

That's fair enough - I wonder if the sales pitch for users already accustomed to taking calls with their AirPods will be a lot more susceptible to being swayed into using the Apple Watch for them instead, then?

Probably! I see a lot of people, particularly young people, out and about these days who seem to keep their airpods in all the time, which probably helps too.

"Hey John, you're on speaker right now -- give me a second putting my AirPods in"

The kind of situation where not carrying your phone works is one where usually you either have your AirPods in your ear, or when you're driving and it is connected to your car audio, or you don't mind answering via the speaker phone.

Transparency mode is good enough on AirPods that I feel safe using them when I am cycling or running, and not having to carry a phone during those activities is a big win for me.

Of course this means getting even more locked into Apple ecosystem, but I even forget that AirPods are bluetooth devices given the way they seamless work with other apple stuff.

> or when you're driving and it is connected to your car audio

This was actually another problem I had with going Apple Watch only, it refused to connect to my cars Bluetooth.

Not sure if I should blame that failure on Apple or Ford, though.

Not to mention severely limited battery life when using it for calls - like half an hour if you're lucky.

I use my LTE watch for smaller errands where I don't want to lug around the phone, yet can still take or make a call if it is really necessary, make payments, etc. Like going out for a walk, or leaving my desk at work for a few minutes. It's a nice convenience, not a substitute.

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