Understanding that the Apple Watch 3 doesn't have a camera does anyone know whether or not you will be able to make or receive FaceTime Audio calls through the watch, across LTE/cellular, independent of a paired iPhone?
I’ have the watch, and have been trying this out. Unfortunately as of today the answer is no. The watch still uses Wi-Fi to make FaceTime audio calls.
If it is connected to a known Wi-Fi network, the watch will work indepent if the iPhone, but again it will not work on lte/cellluar data :(
Messenger is a no go as well and the “line” app still requires the phone to be nearby as well. I got two of these watches hoping this would be an included feature and now I’m thinking about returning them. I only wear the watch while working out so it’s useless to me ymmv.
Looks like Apple finally fixed this problem with watchOS 4.1. Now it also includes a wifi toggle switch to turn the wifi off on the watch to force it to use LTE only. I made sure to turn my phone to airplane mode to test and it worked fine. I also tested the watch as standalone well out of range from known wifi and untethered to my phone. So far so good!
Now if only other 3rd party VOIP apps would get on board, I would definetly wear the watch more.
Sorry for the delay in replying and I appreciate your response. Just wondering if you've had any joy since your post. I've seen others say that FaceTime Audio does work across LTE/Cellular, so I'm a bit confused. I've also heard that for some apps a paired iPhone needs to be on and in range of a data network, but not necessarily near to / or in range of an AW on LTE/Cellular, for some of the functions to work, so curious if this might be the case for FaceTime Audio. Cheers.
We are unsure of this as of now, but I assume that it will be possible. There is regular calling, so why wouldn't there be FaceTime audio?
Hope this helps,
James
Apple Watch 3 FaceTime Audio across Cellular
