A Week With the Apple Watch 3: Faster, and It Makes Calls — But Still an iPhone Accessory

Battery life and call quality both held up well. We also ran into the network problems.

The third-generation Apple Watch looks almost exactly like the second: a rounded rectangle of screen, curved on all four sides, laid over a metal body, with the Digital Crown and a side button on the edge.

The most conspicuous change is that on some models the Digital Crown is now painted red, which means those watches can make and take calls on their own, even when the iPhone is switched off. That is the biggest difference between the Apple Watch Series 3 and the two generations before it.

The red crown does nothing by itself; it is a design choice. Its job is to tell everyone else, "this person's watch can make phone calls." For that you pay an extra 600 yuan.

Like the iPhone 8, the Apple Watch 3 got a run of performance upgrades: wireless charging (not Qi-compatible), a faster processor, a lower-power wireless chip, and more accurate heart-rate and step counting. Put the third generation next to the first and you can see the difference in how fast apps open.

We wore the Apple Watch 3 that makes calls for a week. Here is what we think of it, and the problems we hit while testing.

It Starts Getting Easier at the Pairing Screen

The third-generation Apple Watch went up for pre-order on September 15 and goes on sale this Friday. The cheapest 38mm aluminum model is 2,588 yuan; the version with cellular is 3,188 yuan.

We tested the 42mm gold aluminum model and the black stainless steel one, both of which connect over LTE.

The first time you switch it on, the Apple Watch throws up a pairing screen. It works like quick pairing in iOS 11 — hold two phones running iOS 11 together and the one still in its factory state pops up a pairing prompt. With the watch, holding it near an iPhone that runs iOS 11 and has the Watch app installed makes the phone offer to "Start Pairing."

Tap continue and you get the Apple Watch's signature scan-the-pattern pairing screen. Here it is less convenient than moving data between phones: you still have to type your Apple ID password to finish pairing and restore your data.

While it restores, the watch's standby screen no longer shows a ring-shaped progress bar. The bar has moved to the top left corner, and the middle of the screen runs three short animations explaining the crown, the side button and the home screen. That is one of watchOS 4's improvements.

Activating the Watch's Phone Service Took Four Hours

The Apple Watch 3's biggest selling point is obvious: it can make calls without the phone.

You can turn the feature on while activating the Apple Watch, or later on its own in the Watch app on the iPhone. For now only China Unicom supports it, and only for numbers registered in Shanghai, Guangdong, Henan, Hunan and Tianjin. China Mobile and China Telecom will not support it until the end of the year, with no firm date.

Before setting up cellular, make sure the iPhone is on iOS 11 and the carrier settings file is updated to 29.1 (Unicom). Activating a new watch brings up a "Set Up Cellular" screen; tap Set Up and Unicom's page describing the service appears. Sign up before December 31, 2018 and you get a year with no monthly service fee and no one-time activation fee (the service fee is otherwise 10 yuan a month); the watch shares the phone's data plan.

Next you enter your phone number and password to log in, fill in your name and ID number for real-name verification, and tap "Confirm." About two minutes later the watch's cellular service is live. Tap a contact, a recent call, or dial on the watch, and it calls. You also get a text message telling you the watch's cellular service has been activated.

If you set up cellular after you have already been using the watch, choose "Cellular" in the Watch app on the iPhone.

But perhaps because so many people were activating new watches on the first day and the activation servers were swamped, after we entered our ID number and name, Unicom's page simply would not load, and we had to try over and over. We refreshed that page from 1 pm to 5 pm on Friday before it finally went through.

Reports in China already show that the first buyers of the new Apple Watch hit the same problem we did: the process stalls at Unicom's real-name verification of the phone number.

In theory this is not Apple's fault; Unicom runs the verification. But it is still part of using an Apple Watch. Ideally Apple would set the rules for how carriers handle activation — it has made carriers give ground on much harder things.

Call Quality Is Excellent, But Use Earphones Anyway

At the launch event, Apple COO Jeff Williams called a colleague who was out rowing on Lake Tahoe. She took the call on her watch mid-row, kept pulling on the oars, never lifted her wrist to her mouth, and the call still came through clearly.

In real use we tried talking with our arm in several positions, and the results were close to the demo. You do not have to raise your wrist to your mouth to make a call: let your arm hang at your side and the person on the other end still hears you clearly. Even with your hand behind your back they can make out what you say, though your voice sounds very far away.

The watch's microphone does some noise reduction too. As long as the background music or noise is not too loud, it does not get in the way of the voice. You can make and take calls while walking or running.

Still, we would pair it with earphones: the call is clearer and more private. And because the watch's speaker stops working, it uses less power.

We ran into problems testing calls, too.

Out of more than 50 calls, three had an echo on speakerphone and two had no sound at all in speakerphone mode. These came up only now and then and we could not reproduce them reliably, but they still cost the watch points.

As Apple designed it, once cellular is set up on the phone, the watch can call on its own.

Cut the phone's Bluetooth and cellular, or simply switch it to Airplane Mode, and the watch should still place calls by itself.

The first test watch we received would not. In the Watch app, under "Cellular Settings," there is an option called "Use Cellular Data For," with two choices: "Mirror My iPhone" and "Custom." The default is the first.

We found that on the default setting, the first watch could not make or take calls whether the phone was in Airplane Mode or switched off. After we changed the setting to "Custom," the watch could call with the phone off, but still not with the phone in Airplane Mode, and restarting it several times changed nothing.

The second review watch had a similar problem at first: cellular had to be set to "Custom" before it would call when the phone lost signal.

But after one restart it would call no matter what state the phone was in, as long as the SIM card stayed in.

Apple could not explain what we ran into. It may be a one-off, since we have not found many complaints about it.

The Apple Watch Cannot Give the iPhone Two Numbers

The iPhone has never held two SIM cards. The new Apple Watch looked like a way around that.

Activate the Apple Watch with number A on the iPhone, then put number B in the iPhone. In theory you would then be reachable on two numbers, with the catch that number A works only for calls on the watch.

It does not work.

The reason came up earlier: the Apple Watch makes cellular calls only while the SIM card it is tied to stays in the phone. Take the card out and the watch says "No Cellular Plan," and with no network it cannot call.

There is one other, impractical way to run two numbers: keep your main number in iPhone A, put your second number in iPhone B and pair that phone with the watch, then carry only iPhone A and the watch when you go out.

But then the watch pulls everything over LTE instead of Bluetooth, which burns through the battery. Which defeats the point of carrying two numbers.

Cellular Should Drain the Battery Faster; the Apple Watch 3 Lasted Longer Than We Expected

Next to the 38mm Apple Watch 2 I used to wear, the new Apple Watch 3 runs longer. After a day with at least 100 notifications, 30 minutes of navigation and two five-minute calls, the Apple Watch 3 still had 68% left, while the Series 2 was down to 30%.

The Apple Watch 3's battery life beat my expectations.

Part of that is the bigger battery in the 42mm case; part of it is the new W2 wireless chip, which draws less power. Apple's line is that the Apple Watch handles calls on its own while lasting as long as the last generation — as long as you don't use LTE often.

After we connected the watch to AirPods for an hour-long call and put a run of questions to Siri, the Apple Watch 3 fell further, from 68% to 29%. That is better than Apple's claim of "over 1 hour of talk time on LTE."

Apple's battery estimates for the Apple Watch 3 rest on a long list of assumptions: checking the time 90 times, receiving 90 notifications, using apps for 45 minutes, all inside 18 hours.

So if you put the watch on cellular and turn on GPS, long-distance runners and hikers may well be disappointed.

At which point you would have to switch off cellular, Bluetooth, even GPS, and turn them on only when you need them, to get the promised 18 hours. Which runs against the whole point of buying the cellular Apple Watch.

The new processor opens apps faster than either of the first two generations, and it does so without costing battery life.

You still wait when you open most apps. You can get them to open faster by keeping them running in the background, at the price of much shorter battery life.

The Biggest Change Is Really watchOS 4

The other new thing arriving with the Apple Watch 3 is watchOS 4. Apple upgrades the system every year to make the watch easier to use, and this year is no exception.

Siri now talks back for the first time: ask the Apple Watch 3 something and it answers out loud. Since Siri is not accurate enough, a spoken answer means you no longer have to stare at the screen to see what it heard. This is the Watch 3's alone; the new processor is what lets Siri hold up its end of the conversation.

The multitasking screen has been redesigned. Press the button on the side of the watch now and app shortcuts stack vertically, overlapping; before, the cards sat side by side in a row without overlapping.

If you are listening to music or a podcast, raising your wrist wakes the watch to the playback controls. And the watch can now be a music source in its own right, not just a remote control.

The update you could see coming has to do with health tracking and exercise. Fitness is the feature Apple most wants to pull you in with, and one of the biggest reasons people will spend at least 2,000 yuan on an electronic watch that runs 18 hours at a stretch.

The new system can send you weekly or daily exercise reminders meant to get you moving, break your old records and finish the goals you set. When your activity or your times beat an earlier record, the watch pushes a notification about that too.

The exercise list adds High Intensity Interval Training and Multisport. The second lets you stop one workout and start another, recording time, calories burned and other data for several exercises in a single session. Swimming mode tracks the different strokes you use without a break, though the data only shows up after the workout ends.

The improved heart-rate monitoring is worth noting. In watchOS 4, any Apple Watch with a heart-rate sensor records your resting heart rate, average walking heart rate and recovery heart rate, and plots them together across a 24-hour chart.

The thinking behind it is that any abnormal heart rate may point to something bigger. Apple is working with Stanford University and the telemedicine company American Well to study whether data piled up year after year can detect arrhythmia accurately.

Last year QDaily visited Apple's secret fitness lab. Apple brought in several people who had worked on Nike+ and the Fuelband, bought millions of dollars of equipment, and put together a team of dozens who spent years in that lab working out a few basic questions.

That is what Apple's attention to detail looks like, and what it is willing to spend to get the details right.

The Apple Watch 3 Is Still More an iPhone Accessory Than a Device of Its Own

With GPS added and watchOS 3 installed, the Apple Watch 2 felt like a super sports watch. Its purpose was simple and direct: a fitness accessory that made the iPhone more useful.

With calling added and watchOS 4 installed, the Apple Watch 3 does more, but it has not shaken off its status as an iPhone accessory. Even when it is communicating on its own, it is nowhere near a copy of the iPhone; it keeps only some core communication functions. Apps that need a network connection, Siri and WeChat among them, do not work.

What has changed is its independence: at the least, go out with only the watch and you will not miss an important call. The drawback is just as plain. The watch can only talk over LTE, which is a real test of the mobile network's quality.

Most of the Apple Watch 3's other functions still hang off the iPhone. It flatly does not support Android, which to some degree keeps iPhone owners from moving over to the Android camp — they have already spent 3,000 yuan on the watch and 6,000 yuan on the phone, and as long as the Apple Watch and iOS do not get too unpleasant, those people will look at an iPhone first when they replace their phone.

The situations that suit using the watch alone are limited too: a workout, taking the dog out downstairs, going out to buy something. It may hold up for an hour or two, but expecting it to replace the iPhone entirely is out of the question.

Now that the hardware is in its third generation and the system is at 4.0, the Apple Watch has become a pretty good fitness accessory for the iPhone. Whether you need one depends on how much you care about notifications and how the watch works with the iPhone.

If you are still on the first-generation Apple Watch and cannot do without it, the new watch is a worthwhile upgrade. If you are on the second generation and are used to carrying your phone when you run, upgrading does not mean much.

Unless otherwise noted, the cover image and the images in the text were taken by the author.