Can you live with just Apple Watch and iPad (mini) with cellular?
The answer is probably “no.”
What’s the idea
iPad mini with cellular is awesome. The form factor is better than the current iPhone design which is all-screen and too long. The iPad gives you something to hold with its bezel and the closer-to-square aspect ratio makes it more fun and useful for all the media consumption. The iPadOS upgrades on multi-tasking can be game changers. Having cellular might not seem necessary or leaps and bounds better, but if you add up hundreds of times when “the wifi sucks” or connectivity is unavailable and replace them with moments where you don’t even think about it, you see it’s really great.
For Apple Watch, having cellular is such a freeing, cool technology. watchOS has a beautiful user experience. For instance, unlike some iOS and iPadOS gestures, the Watch ones make sense for the device. My favorite thing about Apple Watch is, because the screen is not big enough for it, you have less draw to digital distractions. Despite this, the Watch still works for many on-the-go computing needs — the limitations have a greater impact on negative features than positive features. Watch is a really great device and you might, like I do, hope that one day everything could fit in that tiny device and you may not need to carry anything else.
I still can’t believe the newest Watches have full keyboard layouts, and the speech-to-text is surprisingly better than Siri of 5 years ago. It’s easier to text on my Watch than on my iPad. Other user interface things like the double tap with one hand and “hey Siri” have become very useful to me. Integration with reminders and shopping lists, etc., has improved my life. It’s really amazing to go shopping and not take your phone.
Does it work? Why?
So, why doesn’t this work — having a Watch and iPad with cellular, and leaving your phone at home?
There are two major downsides.
First, the Watch doesn’t tether to iPads. This has a few downsides such as how you can’t access full Watch settings like you can from the Watch app on iPhone. But only one issue makes a difference for me: the Watch is always connecting via cellular. Usually the Watch uses Bluetooth because you’re close to your phone. When that’s not available, it checks Wifi, which is still relatively power efficient. The last resort is to connect to a cell tower. For me, this results in bad battery drain. The two towns around where I live have really great 5G service — so phones and iPads with cellular work great — and spotty LTE service — so the Watch has a weak or broken connection.
Second, some critical parts of my daily routine are unavailable on Watch + iPad. Basically, I found two things which I use all the time but for which I need an iPhone. The first is CarPlay, and the second is Wallet. I tried plugging my iPad into my car and expected it to work, and it did not. CarPlay isn’t an iPad feature and I don’t know why. As for Wallet, I use Apple Card regularly, and I use Wallet for passes like flight tickets and sports entry all the time. And, there is no Wallet app. These simply don’t work on iPad.
This is actually really annoying to me. These are Apple software products and either they purposefully don’t ship CarPlay and Wallet features for iPad (so people have to buy iPhones) or they simply overlook the projects. But, they hold the keys to solving this user experience problem, and it should be an easy fix — iPadOS and iOS are similar and the software already exists on one.
The bottom line for me, then, is this: I would like to go out with just my Watch most of the time. And I prefer the iPad for almost everything over the iPhone when I actually need a big screen. So, can I just forget about my iPhone? No. There’s this middle area of features that only the iPhone can do.
Hope you find this helpful when shopping or setting up devices!
