Fall detection false trigger

This happened only once to me so far. It was on New Years Eve. I got down on my hands and knees to grab something and then used the steps nearby to pull myself back up. I’ve had multiple surgeries on my right hip and back issues so I’m just not very flexible anymore. It’s plausible in that situation to set off fall detection. I’ve been very careful not to drop the watch and I wear it on my left wrist since I’m right handed. I too have this watch only for the fall detection feature. It came updated with the most recent software and I intend to keep looking at these posts for updates. Thank you all.

Hopefully this is the last chapter in the "false fall detection" saga. The Apple Senior advisor who "reached out" to me refered me to another Senior advisor. He said I had 3 options. 1. Send the watch back for further evaluation. 2. Turn off the fall detection feature completely or 3. Apple would send me a new series 4 watch.

I chose option 3!

They sent me an empty box overnight to return my watch. I returned it and am expecting a new one in a few days.

This ordeal took only about 14 hours! Those of you with similar problems, hang in there. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

I have the same problem, starting one Christmas Day when I took my watch off to put it on its charger when going to bed. It happened again the next day while sitting at a football (soccer) match, and I contacted Apple Support, who were very helpful and put a monitoring app on my watch - it had happened again without any obvious cause before they took that step. Of course it did not happen again within 24 hours so they took the app off again. All was well for about three weeks, when the alarm went off again while I was sitting at a football match (there had been a winter break but I had been at one match in between the two occurrences. This time the support guy just started again, didn't seem to have looked properly at my notes, and told me that the two options were to switch off fall detection (not an option when the main purpose of my upgrading to Series 4 was for fall detection) or to take it in to an Applestore to check the hardware. In between the call and the Applestore visit, the alarm triggered but this time it was a genuine fall when I slipped on the ice while curling, so I know that it actually does work. By the way, that advisor told me that sharing the diagnostics with Apple would not help my case but simply provide Apple engineers with data which they could analyse along with lots of other data about fall detection.

The watch passed all the hardware tests and the advisor told me that she thought it was a software problem. All she could do was set it up as a new watch, which she felt would solve the problem. It didn't - the fall alarm went off again the following evening, once more while I was sitting at a football match. Maybe something to do with clapping? There is a delay between the cause of the alarm and the alarm going off so I don't know what I had been doing - too anxious to turn it off before it called 999.

The Applestore advisor did not offer to exchange the watch as she said that if it was a software problem it would happen again with a new watch. My wife has a Series 4 and sits beside me at the football, and she has never had the fall alarm go off.

The original advisor sent me an email telling me I could reply to it if the problem recurred but when I replied after the last incident, no reply has come back after two days.

I'm still on my first Apple Watch Series 4. Apple Support now has logs created by a diagnostic plug in which I was asked to install. To create these logs, I had to do a special button press of both buttons, and then contact my personal support person who gave me the instructions on how to send the files created to Apple. As the button press procedure is not documented anywhere, I had to try to remember exactly what to do, so it took me a while before I managed to do it correctly. On this occasion, the false alarm triggered three times within 25 minutes while I was sitting watching a football (soccer) match - the common situation for a false alarm to go off. It doesn't happen at every match but it has gone off at all but three matches I have attended over the last two months.

My advisor told me that it could take a while for the engineers to analyse the data but it's now ten days since I sent it and I haven't heard back. Meanwhile I was at another match three days ago and it didn't go off.

The fall detection has gone off twice when I had real falls, one on the curling rink and one when I fell off my bicycle on a patch of ice. I wore it two days ago while training for field hockey and it went off repeatedly when I hit the ball, so I switched off fall detection for the duration of the training, figuring that someone else would notice if I fell! The Watch app on the iPhone does warn that active pursuits may trigger the alarm in error.

I'm confident that the watch will pick up an accidental fall and can live with its going off in error, since it almost invariably happens at a football match. Hopefully, the engineers will pick up the sequence of my movements which triggers it and tweak the software to avoid false alarms. I'm pretty sure it isn't a hardware problem - my watch checks out just fine.

With all due respect. That's an absurd suggestion. It's one of the two major reasons I plunked down the cash for the watch.

What should happen is that Apple should get it to actually learn and work properly. The feature will never be perfect. That's a given, but it should work a whole lot better than it does. In fact it has never picked up an actual fall for me. It only thinks I've fallen when I'm still standing.

Moreover, considering the number of watches Apple has apparently replaced over this problem, they know it needs a lot of work. I'm hoping they will replace mine when I go to the store next week, but I don't have a lot of confidence, speaking to others, that it will make much of a difference considering the false-positive problem.

False fall detection happened to me too. 7 times and after lots of talking to Apple, finally got them to send a new watch. It’s now happened 3 times again with the new watch. It has to be a software problem

Chopping butternut squash up triggered it too!

This has happened to me twice. I was just carrying my small toy poodle into the yard.

I called Apple the first time. They had never heard of a call detection problem.

Just got off the phone with Apple. They (the engineers) told me to unpair the watch and set it up a a new watch.

If the issue happens again they will give me a new watch. Hope this works.

Mine goes off chopping up garlic.

I guess I'll have to call Apple support thought it was a software bug but still happens with latest watch OS. Really strange happens every time I chop garlic.

Good luck. It's a long process.

I have had my watch for 3 days and have gotten 2 false fall alerts. It appears to happen when I just rest my arm on a countertop.

I'm doing nothing, just walk and wash apple and it triggered fall detection. I will need to give them a call.

Please let me know if recalibration solves the problem. Same problem on both watches that I sent back.

Thanks