Apple watch S4 call failed

Today I got an old iPhone 8 from a friend.

After restoring my latest iPhone SE backup on it I can confirm it now works like a charm paired with Watch S4 running WatchOS6.

No more “oh oh I lost connection!“ messages from Siri when issuing a command and phone calls works as expected.

A real shame this couldn’t work correctly on the old SE.

I like the form factor of the smaller models but I guess that’s the way it is for now.

For the past few days I have been using only dark mode on my device and haven’t faced any drop outs/call failed issue. Can someone verify this and confirm if it’s the trick to get our watches to work again?

Hi all,

Yesterday I installed the public beta of iOS 14 on my iPhone SE (first gen) and today I updated my Watch to WatchOS 6.2.8. I've made several attempts now to reproduce this issue, but none of them has been successful! I can hardly believe it, but to me it seems that the issue has really been resolved now. Unfortunately I performed both updates first before testing so I can't tell whether the issue was solved by the iOS update or the WatchOS update. I tested different scenario's; initiating a call on the Watch as well as answering a call on the Watch. In both cases with the iPhone locked. In all attempts the call perfectly started and didn't break.

Can others confirm the same?

Best regards,

Mark

Finished pairing my phone to iPhone XS. All problems disappeared. Definitely a problem with the SE

1) disable VoLTE - did not help

2) locked phone -> try to call from watch -> call failed

then

unlock phone -> try to call from watch -> call OK

then

lock the phone again -> try call from watch -> call OK

3) wait about 1 hour and try to call from watch with locked phone -> call failed

4) back to point 2

unlock phone -> try to call from watch -> call OK

then

lock the phone again -> try call from watch -> call OK

I have no idea where the problem is.

I have to ask You to call Apple Support and tell them about this...without your help this can take forever to fix it.

I call you for action :)

Tell that you cleared your SE, have a new apple watch and problem exist on iP SE... more reports could lead us to fix it faster.

Today i call to Apple to tell them again my story :)

Cheers,

When you turn off Bluetooth on your watch, calls only start working where there is Wi-Fi. Where there is no Wi-Fi, the phone’s connection with the clock is cut off! The problem persists! But from all this it turns out that the problem with Bluetooth. Apple fix your mistake faster !!!

Please report these issues on the feedback page! I did, hopefully they will fix this issue soon.

I noticed that my calls will fail after around 1-2 minutes. What's interesting is that everytime the call will ultimately fail, there is also noticeable delay present, up to a few seconds. If I ask the person on the other end to reply as soon as they hear me say a word I'll hear their reply in 1-3 seconds. Would it be possible for anyone here to try this? I'm pretty sure it's part of the issue. Maybe there is delay and the connection reaches some delay limit and cuts out?

This is on Apple Watch 4 paired with iPhone X.

Please Call Apple Support...report problem.

As far i know you already done all resetting stuff, so please ask the support guy to escalate problem to engineer.

Few days ago i had a call from USA and one person got some logs from my iP and Apple Watch. So the more logs, the bigger chance to resolve the issue.

Agree. I had the same issue with

iphone SE tried 3 devices, iphone 8 and iphone X. What I also noticed that when I create a playlist on the phone and sync it to the watch, it shows up twice. That also explains why calls fail. Call failure as well as playlist duplicates are all Bluetooth related issues.

In my opinion this issue could be related with older phones because they have older Bluetooth hardware...and Apple made a software which uses some new bluetooth features with iPhone SE/ 6s is not handling correctly.

It is possible that they added some new features under the hood and our phones does not handle them as they should.

Our main devices are iPhone SE / 6S ( the same hardware). One person reported problem with 11 Pro, but i think this could be an exception which proves the rule :)

Those new feature could be related with better security, or power management.

I remember that Apple always has problems with Bluetooth stuff after updates. In the past i was struggling with Apple to fix the connectivity with Microsoft mouse...and they did not fix it. After update to MacOS Mojave the mouse stopped to work, but in High Sierra everyting was fine. Strange coincidence that this problem could be related with Bluetooth.

iOS 13 and WatchOS 6 are probably the most buggy operating systems from years.

ps. I am still waiting for reply from engineers who grabbed logs from iPhone and Watch.

Wellcome to the “club”. The issue is indeed a WatchOS 6 and iOS13 related Bug. Nothing to do with carriers.

it seems we iPhone SE USERS are “minor” customers since my 2 apple support contacts (after months spending MY time providing diagnostic files, info...) are all disappeared. There’s no way to interact with apple. Twitter support doesn’t offer info about when and how they think to solve. They even don’t spend a word of apology. I’m stunned. I’ve never seen apple ignoring an issue and customers like this. Never.

andrewponomarenko, I don't think satyriclosis is referring to the battery on the Watch. He is referring to the battery on his SE. With a new battery in his SE, he is saying the problem with making calls on the Watch has gone away. Could be a fluke. Could be there is a connection here.

What would be interesting to know is what is the battery health percentage of SE owners who have calling problems on their Watches. If folks have never replaced the battery on their SE's, it is certainly reasonable to think their batteries could be under performing and this may affect the ability to make calls on the Watch in some way that is not immediately obvious.

I just filed a bug report at the Apple Watch feedback page.

It can be found here

Has anybody else done the same? Was there a return feed back?

If we want to get Apple’s spotlight on this issue I encourage everybody to file in a bug report.

It takes only a few minutes and might turn being helpful.

/P

In your case your bug is really complex. Sorry to hear that.

One additional hint: If you unlock your Apple Watch with your iPhone. Please try and call someone not from your recent contacts. Choose the phone number directly from your contacts. This was something I forgot to mention.