Apple Watch (mostly) without iPhone?

[KingOfPain]

This all comes back to the OP’s aversion to even owning an iPhone, yet somehow being able to get a free ride with a cell Apple Watch.

It's not a "free ride"! The iPhone in question is running with my Apple ID and I pay for its carrier!
I just don't use it 99% of the time, which is why I asked if an Apple Watch would make sense without using the iPhone most of the time.

 

[Vincent Hannah]

Yoused - Because without an iPhone (used on daily basis or not) a cell Apple watch cannot receive or make phone calls or receive and send texts. Which makes it pretty useless as a stand alone device out in the world with no phone.

KingOfPain- we are talking at cross purposes. Sure, you can use an Apple Watch stand alone without its parent iPhone, but the parent iPhone still has to exist and have a valid cell plan. Which brings me back to why have and pay for an iPhone if you aren't going to use it 99% of the time?

And if the answer to that is only "so that I can use a cell Apple Watch as my main device", then that makes the watch a VERY expensive stand alone solution.

 

[fischersd]

When I say an iPhone is required, I don’t mean it has to be turned on at all times to forward calls, I mean it has to exist in the first place.

This all comes back to the OP’s aversion to even owning an iPhone, yet somehow being able to get a free ride with a cell Apple Watch.

Did you miss this?

The OP said: "Just to be clear, we do have an iPhone (which actually runs on my Apple ID; longer story), but I hardly use it."

They can use the iPhone to pair the Apple Watch, then continue on using the watch as desired - but, as they're not actually carrying the iPhone with them, they WILL need to get a cellular Apple Watch and have a plan activated.

(btw, most carriers have considerably cheaper plans to add your watch to your cellular plans - $10/month seems to be about the norm)

 

[Vincent Hannah]

I did NOT miss that. In fact, it was my whole point.

The OP (or his family) has incurred the initial and ongoing costs of an iPhone, solely that it can enable the further initial and ongoing costs of a cell Apple Watch. That makes the watch, as a de facto stand alone device, artificially very expensive and inefficient. Now it's his money, and if he wants to spend it that way he can, but not realizing the massive additional benefit of the iPhone he's already paying for makes my head hurt.

 

[DT]

Must still be mad about Chris Shiherlis escaping ...

 

[japanime]

I did NOT miss that. In fact, it was my whole point.

The OP (or his family) has incurred the initial and ongoing costs of an iPhone, solely that it can enable the further initial and ongoing costs of a cell Apple Watch. That makes the watch, as a de facto stand alone device, artificially very expensive and inefficient. Now it's his money, and if he wants to spend it that way he can, but not realizing the massive additional benefit of the iPhone he's already paying for makes my head hurt.

Maybe the OP has a cell phone plan like mine. Though my enrollment in a rewards program that I rarely use, I pay nothing — zero, zilch, goose eggs — for a plan that gives me free unlimited incoming calls, free outgoing calls placed to phones on the same carrier, and 3 gigabytes of data per month. The data allowance might not be sufficient for most folks, but it's just right for me.

And if I want to do so, I can combine add an Apple Watch cellular plan to my iPhone plan that would also cost me — you guessed it — nothing per month.

The old adage, "If it's free, then you're the product" certainly applies in my case. But because I'm not actively using the rewards program, the amount of marketing data they collect from me is trivial.

 

[KingOfPain]

The OP (or his family) has incurred the initial and ongoing costs of an iPhone, solely that it can enable the further initial and ongoing costs of a cell Apple Watch.

The iPhone SE2 is roughly five years old, so it definitely doesn't exist just to enable an Apple Watch. We have the iPhone for the very rare cases that we need one.
Adding the Apple Watch might actually increase the value, because I'd be more likely to have the Apple Watch with me than the iPhone.

But I'll probably ask the carrier directly if this is possible, because so far my Internet search is inconclusive.