OS2 tetherless feature? Wifi? Setup? Working?

What features are you talking about?

These are the things you can do on your watch without your phone:

Use Apple Watch without its paired iPhone

Although you need your iPhone nearby to do many things with Apple Watch, there are things you can do when you don’t have your iPhone with you or when it’s turned off:

• Play music from a synced playlist on Apple Watch
• Use the watch , alarms , timers , and the stopwatch
• Track your activity with the Activity app
• Track workouts using the Workout app
• Display photos from synced photo albums in the Photos app
• Make purchases with Apple Pay

Apple Watch uses Bluetooth® wireless technology to connect to its paired iPhone and uses the iPhone for many wireless functions. Apple Watch can’t configure Wi-Fi networks on its own, but it can connect to Wi-Fi networks you’ve set up or connected to using the paired iPhone.If your Apple Watch is in range of a Wi-Fi network that iPhone has connected to before, you can still do the following (even if iPhone is turned off):

• Use Siri
• Send and receive Digital Touch messages
• Send and receive messages using iMessage
• Make and receive phone calls (if you have Wi-Fi calling enabled and you’re within range of a Wi-Fi network that your iPhone has connected to before).

relevanted wrote:

Tetherless Wifi is an "advertised feature" in the marketing materials. I took it to be that you could connect to the internet without the iPhone.

Not a simple answer then...

Where did you see this "tetherless WiFi"? I don't recall ever having heard the term.

No, you can't connect to the internet without the phone. You can connect to known Wifi networks and perform a very limited number of functions. See the list in the portion of the manual I quoted. The manual seems pretty clear to me. What is it you don't understand?

For what it is worth "tetherless wifi" was announced as a part of Watch OS 2 at the Apple developers conference.

http://www.techradar.com/news/wearables/apple-watch-os-2-release-date-news-and-f eatures-1296413

Tetherless wifi

Yes, this sounds exactly like what you think it is. The Apple Watch is able to connect to open Wi-Fi networks without needing to connect to your iPhone first. You'll can leave your phone in another room and your wrist will be a perfectly suitable alternative. Android Wear's latest update already supports this feature, so it's nice to see the iOS device receiving it as well.

It's been hard to find a time to put this into practice though – you can keep the Watch connection alive in most homes thanks to being close enough. We can't even find this mode in the Watch itself, so perhaps it auto mirrors from the phone to learn the connected Wi-Fi locations.

Honestly, that doesn't sound much different than what's in the manual. The article you quoted doesn't mention connecting to the internet.

Hi Meg: The watch manual on iBooks is from April, so it only covers OS 1 as far as I can tell.

I asked tech support about this today. He said it is automatic.

When your watch loses Bluetooth contact with your phone, the watch will directly connect to your wifi network as long as you are still in range of your wifi router. Wifi router needs to be 2.4ghz. Will not work with 5.0ghz.

I forget the name of the glance which shows your connection status to your phone, but that is where you can see if you're connected to the wifi network. It will show a green cloud icon rather than a phone icon.

I haven't had a chance to test this yet to see exactly what it does (if it allows you to connect to the Internet). I forgot to ask!

He did say there is a new watch manual covering OS 2. Hopefully they'll get it up on iBooks soon!

Have a great day!

Yea! I found a support document that covers this:

About Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on Apple Watch

Learn about Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for your Apple Watch, and why you should use both.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204562

Hey Meg, digging further, no internet connection. You are absolulsly correct, gives you

- siri

- digital touch messages

- imessage

- wifi-enabled phone calls

SOrry for my confusion!

I did test some, turned off my phone and my watch connected to wifi.

I am a Siri nut, so it was great to be able to ask questions and get her to set timers, open apps etc.

The only questions she can't answer with the phone off are location based ones, like 'where's the closest Mexican Restaurant,' as that needs the phone's GPS.

But Stock quotes, sports scores, word definitions, etc worked great. So for me at least this is a nice improvement over the watch OS 1 experience.

Although your query involves the same subject, it is different to the OP's question (which has already been answered). A different question should be asked in a new thread. If others later have the same query, this also makes it easier for them to find - hopefully along with an answer.

More info here: Find answers and ask new questions