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Comment by AVTizzle | Hacker News Reader

>> "When are you separated from your iPhone? When you’re exercising. What do you miss most when you’re away from your phone? Messages and phone calls."

Anecdotal, but personally, this is one of the most refreshing and cherished qualities about my exercise time: it's ME time. No messages, no phone calls. Phone goes on airplane mode, and I'm in my own zone for those 60-90 minutes.

After reading My Year with a Distraction Free iPhone* I took steps to drastically reduce notifications and social media apps from my phone (not as drastic as the article, but way quieter than before), and I feel happier for it.

Maybe it's just me, but MORE notifications, messages, and calls to my wrist sounds like exactly what I don't want.

* https://medium.com/time-dorks/my-year-with-a-distraction-fre...

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I do like having a distraction-free iphone, but I also like to run and hauling a huge phone with me is stupid. But I like to run on the trails on Mt Tam and it can feel surprisingly remote quickly, so I want to keep the ability to make phone calls somehow. I am looking forward to trying the watch for just this use case. (Also, music while running!) I'm assuming I can turn off notifs on the watch just like on the phone.

In The Verge's testing, the cellular range was not great. I wish they'd done side-by-side testing with an iPhone. Something like: "if your iPhone has one bar, your Watch will have none. If two, then either one or none."

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/20/16334066/apple-watch-seri...

That's the best part about this, though. I have a Series 2 and can already set Do Not Disturb on the watch and also set numbers that I want to come through even in DND. No notifications unless it's from my family or my boss when I'm on call.

Same, I understand the taste for continuous reachability. But god when I do run outside I want to free my mind and not stay linked.

The always-online thing is gone for me, but I understand it's entirely subjective. For those who still need or enjoy full reachability then a 3G watch is probably a great thing.

I also see other value:

- hard to lose, it's on your wrist, not in some pocket, etc.. - hard to pickpocket (thus) - probably more battery efficient than thos 5" n-core flat computers we call phones. I'd like a mp3 / time / map / gps tracker / notification instead of my smartphone.

One cons:

- so much radio waves on your wrist ... hmmm .. I'd wrap some tin foil underneath :)

Agreed.

I have the series 2 and have started running without my phone since the series 2 can still track my runs without it. The one thing I kind of miss is listening to podcasts while running since I still would need my phone for that.

You can listen to podcasts with the watch series 2 and no phone, you just need wireless headphones.

Can you listen to podcasts on Apple Watch 3 without a phone around?

Yes - you can stream songs over cellular.

I don't think this is possible. There is no podcasts app for the watch (shocking). If you have your iPhone, you can pause/play forward/back... but this is the generic player for apps that don't have a version for the Watch. i.e. I use Google Play Music, which doesn't have a Watch version of its app, but when I play music from my iPhone, I can pause/play etc. from the watch.

Until very recently overcast supported apple watch playback, though this recently had to be removed due to API changes[1]. So it's definitely possible, though the experience is seriously lacking until Apple get their act together on the API side.

[1] https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch

Can you import podcasts into iTunes? Surely from there you can transfer to the watch like with Fitbit Ionic.

Interesting... that might actually be possible.

That's all orthogonal to what the watch is capable of doing. Just like with phones.

I think gps+cellular watches have a lot to offer. Too bad they are still expensive and have modest battery life.

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