Using as standalone

[adamdadam]

Hey guys I'm from Canada and I have my urbane on the way. I'm planning on using it as a standalone phone when I don't feel like taking my phone with me. Have any of you guys used it with just a sim card installed? How was calls and texting? I know the urbane is canceled but I'm thinking of keeping it as long as I can do some simple things on it like text without my phone. I have a Apple Watch as well for apps and all of that.

Thanks

 

[daddyd302]

I think you need to pair it first before you can use it. If you want it as a solo device, just disable blue tooth on your phone and you're using the watch by itself. I wouldn't want to rely on this thing as your phone. You'll pretty much need a quiet environment as the speaker isn't all that loud. Since there's no keyboard you'll need to use google voice and again will need a quiet place to get it to work.

This should really be a last option phone or emergency use only as it's pretty limited on what it can do atm. Until you can pair it with a headset so you can talk on it, it's pretty limited as a phone.

 

[Rufio]

In true stand alone mode, with the watch WiFi off and only connected to cellular LTE, AND with my phone set to airplane mode, I'm able to surf the web with browser on my watch. But none of the Google services work. Turn airplane mode off on my phone and Google cloud services functionality returns on the watch. So the watch has to be able to see the phone on the "internets" for Google services (ie Google now) to work. To be honest I don't think this is a big deal. You still get your text, email, bowser functionality.

 

[ForceofWill]

Just did some testing on mine. With the phone on airplane mode not paired with the watch and the watch only receiving a cell signal and NO WIFI, it WILL NOT access "Ok Google" for anything. Meaning you can NOT text to speech for anything. I WAS able however to receive texts and send a canned response from the list or draw emoji and I could receive and make phone calls manually but not by voice obviously. The call quality is fine.

My thoughts is that the "Ok Google" takes too much processing power the watch doesn't have without relying on the computing firepower google has in the cloud for it and since there's no keyboard you can't do much.

Sidenote - I was also unable to use google maps in just cell service. At this point it seems that without a phone paired or Wi-fi the watch is JUST a phone. This is mildly disappointing for me but definitely not a deal breaker. The only time I would go without a phone on me, I just want to be able to receive phone calls and texts.

 

[adamdadam]

Thx for the reply. Are you still able to reply to texts with voice? I saw in the manual there's a talk to text that's not with ok Google.

 

[ForceofWill]

Thx for the reply. Are you still able to reply to texts with voice? I saw in the manual there's a talk to text that's not with ok Google.

No, it says speak or whatever with the mic symbol but doesn't hear anything you say to it.