Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

"Your Apple Watch app acts like a separate process running on a separate device, however behind the scenes the OS runs a ‘skeleton’ like version of your host application on the user's iPhone and the Apple Watch extension in tandem, both on the iPhone"

I totally missed this limitation until now. So the iWatch works only if you have an iPhone and the phone is in communication range with the watch?

What can the watch still do if the phone is offline or too far away?

View on HN

> What can the watch still do if the phone is offline or too far away?

I believe the watch face continues to work but anything that requires interacting with non-native apps (most of apple's apps are native on the watch fyi) or network connectivity just won't work. On the plus side it will work with bluetooth and wifi so you can at least go some [minor] distance away from your watch. But this same limitation exists in Android Wear and Pebble as well (though Pebble has native applications so less of an issue there).

If the phone is not present or turned off the watch will stay connected to wifi networks that you've joined in your phone previously. This is only useful/available for native apps, but it means that you can still use Siri over wifi without a phone.

It's a less restrictive version of the idea on Android Wear as well. Most apps do currently require your phone to be present, but the watch itself is generally running a bit more autonomously than the Apple Watch is. The phone can actually just send data to the watch, and the watch deals with it. It's not just blitting a computed image onto the screen (which is an exaggeration of the Apple model, but it's closer to that with Apple than Android currently). You have access to the sensors on Wear. You can create custom layouts.

I'm not sure why, but I get the feeling that these watches aren't all that smart. It sounds like the portable pocket computer we already bought does all the heavy lifting, while the smartwatch itself functions as a secondary display?

I never gave them much thought until just now, but learning that really saps some of the novelty away from the whole thing for me.

I can't imagine a good reason to own a watch in 2015 and learning they're only functional when paired with a phone reinforces that belief.

The Apple Watch is a secondary display and sensor array. Battery limitations have handicapped it for doing much on its own.

>But this same limitation exists in Android Wear and Pebble as well.

This is not true. Both pebble and androidwear allow developers to write native applications that run directly on the watch, and can continue operating without the tether to a phone. Without the phone they have no network connection which limits their potential a lot, but they can still access the sensors on the watch, record data, and provide interactions based on stored and sensor data.

You cut off the rest of my sentence to say what the rest of my sentence said. Well except I missed android wear having native apps. But I still think my point is valid; you're still limited without the phone just a little less so and some apps, like running apps, really need the GPS on the phone to function well on Android Wear anyway.

You're also missing that Android Wear gained wifi support in the last update - without the phone, you just have to connect to a wifi network (not the same network as the phone necessarily) and you have full functionality again.

I didn't bother mentioning things where there was parity :)

You can still go on a run, for example, without the phone and listen to a few gigs worth of music. There's apparently a bit of machine learning that allows the watch to do all of its health metrics on your run, once it has gotten to know your patterns.

No GPS though. I was hoping the watch would at least have that so I didn't have to put up with Garmin's terrible software anymore.

Maybe rev. 2.

I've never seen a sleek, tiny watch that had GPS. The Fitbit Surge is the smallest I've seen and it's still pretty huge - more like a bracelet than a watch.

Pictures of it on actual wrists here: http://www.cnet.com/news/fitbit-charge-charge-hr-and-surge-h...

I don't know the nuts and bolts details but I think GPS has power/size requirements that preclude it from fitting in the size of something like a "normal" watch, at least until there's a major advance in battery technology.

Well, the watch isn't all that tiny, and Garmin does make a line of GPS watches similar in size to the 38mm watch.

I have no comment on accuracy, as I bought the expensive and much larger Forerunner 910XT. The current top of the line Garmin is the Fenix 3, which again is similarly-sized.

So, what I've heard -- and I'm not sure what the source was -- is that if you go for a few runs with your phone in your pocket, the Watch will be able to map the run without your phone, after it has learned your stride, etc.

I can't foresee GPS being a standalone component on watches due to battery drains. Garmin's watch currently gives me 10 hours on GPS, but that's also due to the fact that all it does is track my run.

Maybe Apple can add a low-power GSM/2G phone modem to Apple Watch v2. Then one could do outdoor sport without carrying a smartphone in the pocket.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com