How far can the iWatch be from the iPhone and still be able to make calls, etc?

Greetings larrymoto,

Thanks for your post. I see you’re wanting to know how far your Apple Watch can be from your iPhone and still be able to make calls. Making and receiving calls on the Apple Watch is a great feature. I’ve got some great resources that will help.

This first resource talks about what kind of networks your watch can connect to and how to tell if your watch is connected to Wi-Fi and not your phone via bluetooth:

About Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on Apple Watch - Apple Support

Compatible Wi-Fi for Apple Watch

Your Apple Watch can connect to a Wi-Fi network:

• If your iPhone, while connected to your watch with Bluetooth, has connected to the network before.
• If the Wi-Fi network is 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz.

For example, your Apple Watch won't connect to 5GHz Wi-Fi or public networks that require logins, subscriptions, or profiles. When your Apple Watch connects to a compatible Wi-Fi network instead of your iPhone connection, appears in the Settings Glance.

This resources discusses Wi-Fi calling. If your carrier supports Wi-Fi calling and it’s set up on your phone and you have enabled Wi-Fi calling on your watch, you can make and receive calls on your Apple Watch without your iPhone near as long as your connected to Wi-Fi. With Wi-Fi calling the iPhone wouldn’t even need to be on:

Make a call with Wi-Fi Calling - Apple Support

IN my personal experience in using the phone, and playing music over Bluetooth to a Beats Pill from the watch the range is only about 12-15 feet. Bluetooth should be around 30 feet, but my personal experience is about half of that.

#1 - Bluetooth (the main way the Watch and iPhone connect) is effective for about 30 feet or so.

#2 - When they are out of that range, they will attempt to keep in "contact" using a local Wifi network. It needs to be one that your phone automatically connects with - like your home network or your office. Supposedly it won't work on public Wifi networks (like Starbucks - but why you would be more than 30 feet from your iPhone in a Starbucks is a question for another night). But - and I have not tested this out myself - some people have posted that they were not able to make or receive calls through the Watch over Wifi. So perhaps that is one function that will not work out of Bluetooth range.

swandy wrote:

#2 - But - and I have not tested this out myself - some people have posted that they were not able to make or receive calls through the Watch over Wifi. So perhaps that is one function that will not work out of Bluetooth range.

That has been my experience; once you're out of bluetooth range the phone feature does not seem to work and using dictation to text does not work either.

I have lost my iPhone 6 plus at college in building 6 and my apple watch kept counacted up to building 20. it is that possible because my phone is still counacted to College WIFI 😮