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Ask HN: Is there anything I can do with an Apple Watch without an iPhone?

26 points by bojangleslover ↗ HN
Title says it all. I got an Apple Watch from my job but I have a Pixel 4a. Tried setting it up and it appears you MUST have an iPhone to use it.

Is there anything I can do with this thing besides sell it to someone who has an iPhone?

For what it's worth, the only thing I really care about there is the heart rate and O2 monitor. I would love to decouple those features if I could.

11 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 25.8 ms ] thread
Jcowell
If someone in your family has an iPhone, they can set it up for you [1].

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211768

whatthesmack
Just did this for my 5 y/o with a cellular-capable Apple Watch Series 5, so when we go to a theme park soon we can track him if he gets lost and call him if needed. It's $10/mo extra on my AT&T unlimited plan and the watch gets its own phone number that can receive calls like any phone. Highly impressed with this functionality Apple and mobile providers have offered!
aaaaaaaaata
Bonus, they'll be able to open future Apple devices with their gait + heart-signature!
rafaelgarrido
Same here, for the same reasons… It has a lot of fun features that I use with my daughter. We can sync our watches and do PTT with the Walkie-talkie app, we exchange voice and gif messages… And we have a lot of parental control over her usage.
f0e4c2f7
This sounds great - would you happen to know if there is a way to do this with an Android watch or an apple watch for someone without an iPhone?

Seems like a good middleground for kids that's not quite a smartphone.

ChicagoBoy11
The one issue with decoupling is that while you may then get it to "work," so many of the features you care about, even the heart rate monitoring and 02 monitor, will "work" on your wrist but will really display data in a manner that really assumes you have an iPhone. A lot of the health features will directly guide you to "look at your phone" to actually get a picture of what's going on, rather than allowing it all to be seamlessly browsable on your wrist. IMO, you are better off selling this and buying an alternative that plays nicer with your Android phone... the utility you will get from this without an iPhone will be severely limited and I dare say will very quickly become an annoyance.
sdevonoes
Hijacking the thread: is there any Smart Watch out there that I can use without any smart phone and that I can put music in it? Basically, I would like to use it as an mp3 player (so, ideally I would just need to plugin it to my laptop to transfer music).
ashrodan
My Garmin forerunner music can load up Spotify music and connect to a Bluetooth headset. Will need a phone to setup and update
hajmo97
I don´t think that there is any Smart Watch out there that can be used without a phone or "computer" because every Smart Watch like e.g. Garmin communicates and syncs the data via your phone or any other device over bluetooth. It can be also done via USB, but if you for example run every day the built in memory of Smart Watch will be full very fast and you have to hook it up to a internet connected device to sync it and to free the internal storage (you have to install a software on the internet connected device). Beside the running data, it also monitores you HR,sleep,steps,...24/7, so there is allot of data that fills up the internal storage.
qubex
Forgive me for going slightly off-topic and perhaps prying, but: how come did your employer provide you with an Apple Watch, particularly if they don’t provide you with an iPhone to use it with?