Q: Screen times out when dictating text message on Apple Watch

Thank you for the quick reply!  I tried powering off both phone and watch and then restarting iPhone first and then watch and still have the timeout issue.  I then unpaired and re-paired the Apple Watch and am still experiencing the same issue ... when I push the microphone button to reply to a text message via dictation, if I dictate more than about 15 seconds, the screen turns off and when I tap the screen or push the either of the two side button to awaken the screen, the text I was dictating has closed and the watch either returned to the message thread or the main watch screen depending on what wake screen setting I have set.  The text message I was dictating has disappeared.

Thanks again for the reply!  I didn't find that thread with someone else having the same issue; thank you for directing me there.  It appears I am having the same issue and will contact Apple directly to resolve.  Thanks again.

I have an update.  I took the Apple Watch to the Genius Bar at my local Apple Store and they were stumped as well.  Since it is still under warranty they sent it back to Apple for repair.  Apple opted to replace the watch, so I was hopeful that my particular watch was defective and that the new one would work properly.  I got the watch back last night and paired it with my iPhone and the same problem is happening!

Also, I purchased a second Apple Watch while the first was being repaired and the same problem is happening on it as well.  So ... it must not be the watch.  Now I'm wondering if it has something to do with using the watches with my iPhone SE.  If anyone else has an iPhone SE paired with an Apple Watch please let me know if this issue is happening to you.

Interestingly, when I click the microphone to dictate a response to an email, everything works fine and the dictation screen stays on until I click Cancel or Done.  However, when clicking the microphone to dictate a response to a text message, the screen times out after about 15 seconds and the dictation is lost.

Also, having tried everything else, I completely reset the iPhone SE and watch by erasing all data.  I didn't want to restore from backup incase the issue was somehow embedded.  This whole process took quite a while and I had to re-download all of my apps and setup the phone and watch again (and lost my health data).  But the message dictation problem is still there.  I really don't know what else to try, but it doesn't seem like very many others are having this issue, so I'm pretty baffled.  I'd love to hear from an iPhone SE user with an Apple watch, otherwise, I may try pairing the watch to my wife's iPhone 6 to see if the problem may be with the iPhone SE.

I'm not really sure what else to try.  I have tried all manner of turning Siri and dictation on and off, re-pairing from backup, restoring from backup, setting up as a new watch, wiping phone and watch, toggling iMessage, etc. etc. all to no avail.  I'm pretty familiar with tech issues and troubleshooting, but I don't know what to make of this problem.  If I find a solution, I will re-post.  If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.  Not being able to dictate a response to a text message really inhibits the functionality of the watch since that is the only way to respond without using one of the canned responses.  Very frustrating!

I have an interesting update.  After receiving a replacement Apple Watch, I still experienced the dictation issue described above.  I had also purchased a second Apple Watch in the interim and it also had the dictation issue.  So, the next step would naturally be to pair the watch with a different phone ... with three Apple watches all having the same problem, clearly the watch was not the problem.  So I paired the watch with my wife's iPhone 6 and the dictation problem was solved!

So logically the problem was either that my particular phone was bad or all iPhone SE's (or at least a certain "batch" of them) have a dictation issue with the Apple Watch.  So I went to my local Apple store and they kindly paired my Apple Watch with a new iPhone SE and quite surprisingly it still had the dictation issue.  So, I may have discovered a more ubiquitous problem, i.e. the Apple Watch looses a pretty critical piece of functionality when paired with an iPhone SE.  My issue has been escalated to Apple engineering and it will be fascinating to see if my problem truly is a fundamental flaw in the iPhone SE/Apple Watch combination.

I'm happy to have helped Apple uncover a potential problem, but at the same time, I'm wasting a lot of time troubleshooting so, I'm hoping they will just let me return the iPhone SE and get the iPhone 6s instead (I haven't asked yet and am not sure what they will do).  I went with the SE because of its size, but I do get a lot of benefit from the Apple Watch, so I'd rather change to a phone that allows me to use both watch and phone.

As I mentioned before, if you have an SE and an Apple Watch and are not experiencing the issue I described in my original post, it would be very interesting to hear from you.  I'm not sure if Apple monitors the discussions section of their website, but I'm sure their engineering department would be curious to know.

Thanks for the tip as well.  This worked for me.

In case anyone is interested, I tried several more things all to no avail.  First, I tried duplicating the success I had on my wife's iPhone 6 and couldn't repeat it, so we are not sure that this ever solved the problem; after trying several other things, she thinks she may have been mistaken that it was fixed on the iPhone 6.

I actually purchased a 6s after thinking it worked on my wife's 6 and the issue persisted.  I finally went into the Apple store ready to return my 6s and watch and they showed me that if you change the setting to keep the screen awake for 70s you have quite a bit more time to dictate the message.  Both my watch and the Apple person's watch would time out after 70s.  So I really couldn't argue with that ... 70s is probably sufficient to get out any text message I might want to send.

But bottom line, it is a bug since it doesn't do this in email dictation on the Apple Watch.  My issue was escalated to engineering so I assume they know about the problem.  It really should allow for only a 15s wake screen with unlimited dictation time on a text message (what if someone distracts you in the middle of text dictation ... starting over seems unreasonable), but oh well, I guess this is a first gen product.  I'm not holding my breath that they will fix it with this iteration of the watch, but perhaps with the Apple Watch 2.