That Cellular Apple Watch Everyone's Suddenly Not So Sure About

So the big Apple week finally happened. iPhone 8 and 8 Plus shipped last Friday, the notch-having iPhone X is still a month and a half out, and the thing I actually wanted to talk about isn't the phones at all. Its the watch.

Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular went on sale the same day as the new iPhones, and within about 48 hours the reviews started saying the same thing in slightly different words: the LTE connection is flaky as hell. Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal wrote about her Series 3 connecting to random open wifi networks it had never seen before, then just hanging there unable to actually get online, phone left behind and all. Other reviewers found similar stuff. Apple's official line, as of a few days ago, is that they know about it and a software fix is coming. Not "here's the fix," just "one is coming." Cool, thanks.

I don't own a Series 3 and after this week I'm genuinely glad I didn't pre-order one. I've had a Series 1 since Christmas (my sister got a great deal on it, don't ask, I still don't fully understand her Best Buy strategy) and even that thing loses its Bluetooth connection to my phone about once a day for no reason I've ever diagnosed. Adding a cellular radio and a whole separate connection to worry about, one that apparently gets confused by open wifi networks the way I get confused by the self-checkout at the grocery store, sounds like a recipe for a watch that's connected to something at all times except the thing you actually want it connected to.

The part that bugs me more than the bug itself is the pricing model around it. You're paying $399 and up for the hardware, and then most carriers want another $10 a month to actually use the cellular part, on top of whatever you're already paying for your phone plan. AT&T and Verizon are doing this "NumberShare" thing where it's supposed to share your existing phone number, which is neat in theory. But $10 a month for a feature that, this week at least, mostly seems to mean your watch will confidently connect to your neighbor's unsecured router and then just sit there confused, isn't exactly the value proposition Apple was selling on stage two weeks ago.

I get why the cellular watch idea is appealing. Leave your phone at home, go for a run, still get a text if something's wrong. That's a genuinely good use case and I don't think the idea is bad. I just think this is what happens when a company ships a v1 hardware feature on the same day as its flagship phone launch and the phone launch eats all the attention, so the watch problems trickle out over the following week instead of getting caught before release. Nobody was watching the watch coverage closely enough on day one because everybody was busy comparing iPhone 8 camera samples.

If you already ordered one, I wouldn't panic, this reads like a software issue and not a "the antenna is in the wrong place" issue (RIP a certain 2010 phone, RIP the discussion I'm apparently required to still not have because everyone brings it up whenever a wireless bug on Apple hardware happens). But if you were on the fence about paying the cellular premium versus just getting the GPS-only model for $329, I'd wait a few weeks and see what actually gets fixed. There's no reason to be the free debugging team for a $10-a-month subscription feature.

Also, unrelated complaint I'm sneaking in here because it's my blog and I can: can we stop calling it "LTE" on the watch marketing when half the point of the thing is that it's supposed to just quietly use wifi when it's around? Pick a lane. Either sell me on "always connected" or sell me on "cellular when it matters," those are different products with different failure modes, and this week proved it.

Anyway. iPhone 8 review is probably next, once I've actually held one longer than the five minutes I got at the Apple Store on Friday, which was mostly me trying not to get elbowed by a guy filming the whole display table for his YouTube channel.