Should You Buy the Apple Watch Series 3 with Cellular?

By Sarah Kingsbury Wed, 10/11/2017

Early reviews of the cellular Apple Watch Series 3 uncover issues connecting to LTE when in range of Wi-Fi networks. In the 68th episode, the iPhone Life team weighs in on the significance of this problem. Sarah, David, and Donna also discuss who should buy which of the three smartwatches Apple now offers.

Click here to listen and subscribe. If you like what you hear, be sure to leave a review. And remember to tune in every other week to hear our editors share with you the latest Apple news, best apps, iPhone tricks, and coolest accessories.

This episode is brought to you by Fanatic Software. You need a calendar with superhero-like strength and the power to help you tackle everything from important meetings to equally-as-important family dinners. Fanatic Software's Informant 5 app for your iPhone and iPad lets you manage projects with tasks and notes, sync your calendar among all of your devices, get a 30-day calendar view that’s actually helpful, and much more.

This podcast was recorded using high-quality microphones from Blue Microphone.

Question of the week:

Will you buy the new Apple Watch? If so, will you buy the Series 3 GPS, the Series 3 Cellular, or the Series 1? Email podcasts@iphonelife.com to let us know.

Articles and links referred to in this episode:

Useful links:

Transcript of Episode 68:

Donna Cleveland: Hi, and welcome to episode 68 of the iPhone Life Podcast. I'm Donna Cleveland, Editor in Chief at iPhone Life.

David Averbach: I'm David Averbach, CEO and Publisher at iPhone Life.

Sarah Kingsbury: And I'm Sarah Kingsbury, Senior Web Editor of iPhone Life.

Donna Cleveland: Each week we bring to you the best apps, top tips, and great gear in the iOS world, except for this week, actually, we're devoting especially to the Apple Watch. We've got some Apple Watch news, and we want to help you decide which Apple Watch you should buy if you're in the market this holiday season.

David Averbach: If you're not an Apple Watch owner yet but you've wondered about it, should you get it, should you not, stay tuned. We're going to cover that too. This is for people who either have an Apple Watch and are thinking about upgrading, have an Apple Watch and are not thinking about upgrading, or thinking about maybe some day have an Apple Watch or are curious about that.

Donna Cleveland: Yes, and I do think that Apple's latest releases make the Apple Watch appealing to a wider range of people. It's been somewhat of a niche product up until now, and now it's ... Stay tuned. Keep an open mind. You might be interested in an Apple Watch when you didn't think you were. First, we want to share with you our sponsor for this episode, Fanatic Software, with their Informant 5 calendar app.

David Averbach: One of my least favorite built-in Apple apps, two of my least favorite built-in Apple apps, are reminders — I never quite get them to work right, sometimes my reminders don't pop up — and the calendar app, which I just really struggle to use very well. One of the questions I get a lot from people are what are good alternatives for those two apps? An alternative for both of those two apps, and this is why it's so powerful, is the Informant 5. It combines really powerful task management tools with your calendar in one place, which is really how they should be, because ...

Donna Cleveland: Really.

David Averbach: ... reminders and calendars go hand in hand. Part of why I get confused is sometimes I'll tell Siri, like, "Remind me that I have a meeting tomorrow," and it doesn't know.

Donna Cleveland: It's a separate app.

David Averbach: Is it putting it in the calendar? Is it putting it as a reminder? Really, a lot of these things go hand in hand. Really powerful calendar. Really powerful reminders, much more customizable, really user-friendly, all in one app: Informant 5. They have a free version and a premium version. They have a Mac app as well, so it syncs across both.

Donna Cleveland: I love that cross-device integration.

David Averbach: Yeah. Make sure you check it out.

Donna Cleveland: The free version has a lot of features too. It's definitely a free version that is still very usable, so it's worth trying that out, and if you like it, then springing for the pro.

David Averbach: Yeah, I'm so excited that we have so many great sponsors that have great products. It's one of the things we try to do, is make sure that we bring in people who advertise with us who actually have great products, and this is a good example of an app that's just really useful, a really good solution for people out there if you're looking for a more powerful way to manage your schedule. Make sure you check it out. It's called Informant 5. If you are confused by that in any way, you can go to iphonelife.com/podcast and we'll have a link for you.

Donna Cleveland: Yes. We also have a quick plug for our daily tips newsletter. If you go to iphonelife.com/dailytips you can sign up to get one minute tips each day that teach you something you can do with your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch. This week we wanted to teach you a quick iOS 11 tip, and that's how to disable Siri's home button functionality so you only use Siri by using "Hey Siri" by voice. This is a feature ... I've just activated Hey Siri here.

David Averbach: Happens every time.

Donna Cleveland: It does. The purpose of this is that ... The home button does a lot now, so sometimes you're trying to activate Apple Pay and you by accident press and hold instead of double-pressing from the lock screen, and suddenly you're using Siri when you're trying to pay at checkout. "Hey Siri" is a really great feature and a lot of us prefer to activate Siri by voice. Now you have the option to go into your settings and then go under Siri and search, and you can just toggle off Press Home for Siri. Once you've done that, your home button will just no longer activate Siri. That's something you might want to try out and see if you like.

David Averbach: There's a really good use case for this for me, is I've seen a lot of people struggle with Touch ID. They end up holding it too long and it turns on Siri and then they can't unlock their phone. This is a really good solution if you have a hard time distinguishing between lightly touching the device for Touch ID and pressing it for Siri. Try it. I will say the downside is "Hey Siri" doesn't always work for me. Case in point, my phone didn't just light up.

Donna Cleveland: Well, it was face down though.

David Averbach: No, but it didn't. "Hey Siri" didn't work.

Donna Cleveland: Also, if you're having trouble activating Siri with your home button, don't press. Just put your finger there.

David Averbach: Yes. That's a good secondary tip. If you are having trouble with this and don't want to turn off the feature, it's all about placing your finger without pressing.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah. This is definitely one of those tips that's not going to be for everyone. We're not saying we recommend everybody turn off the home button functionality for Siri, but it is-

Sarah Kingsbury: Or on the iPhone 10, that will be the side button.

Donna Cleveland: Yes.

David Averbach: Yes.

Donna Cleveland: But it's something that's nice to check out because people have different frustrations. This is a frustration for some people and this tip will help solve that.

David Averbach: Yeah, one of the great things about our tip of the day is the iPhone is so customizable and some of us don't know all the ways, not every customization is right for every person, but it's really nice to be empowered to know all of the ways and then figure out which ones are right for you.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah, and digging through the settings app and trying to figure out what it all means is also not very fun, so we just break it out for you in a fun, easy to consume way.

David Averbach: And free.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah. Next we want to tell you about our iPhone Life Insider Program. If you go to iphonelife.com/insider, you can sign up for our monthly subscriptions and this is our premium offering that helps you really master your IOS devices. We have guides that walk you through all the new features of say your iPad or if you just want to get to know IOS 11, we have a comprehensive guide with all of the new features available to you there. We also have our Ask An Editor feature where Sarah will help people who sign up, if they have any tech related issue with their IOS devices and she'll help them find answers.

David Averbach: Real quick, one quick plug, you also get a digital subscription to iPhone Life Magazine. We're coming out with our new buyer's guide and it's awesome. I think it's our best buyer's guide we've ever done. How about you?

Donna Cleveland: I think so too.

David Averbach: We included devices this time around, we have comparisons of all the iPads, Apple Watch, which we're getting into today and of course, iPhone, please all the best gear for cases, the new chargers, everything you need to know for accessories as well. Really awesome, you can subscribe to the magazine alone if you want, iphonelife.com/subscribe or you get a digital subscription through the Insider Program: iphonelife.com/insider.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah, so Sarah has a insider question she's going to share with us.

Sarah Kingsbury: This is from an insider who recently updated his iPad or his iPhone - I can't remember - to IOS 11 and now what he goes to share photos, the option to share them via messages is not showing up. There's a couple things that this could be. One, he should probably go into settings and messages and then make sure that MMS messages are toggled on and iMessages are toggled on. Then he also should probably check how many photos he's sending. If you're sending too many photos, like messages won't always be an option, but also it's possible that the order, the share order, because there's a whole share menu and if you swipe to the left, you'll see more share options and so it's possible that the order was mixed up and so it's just further down there, because it's not actually possible to remove messages from the share menu, so if he wants to share the share order, if anyone wants to change the share order, you swipe all the way to the left and there'll be in the share menu, a little thing that says "more" and you tap on that and you can edit and then you ...

David Averbach: That's a really cool tip.

Sarah Kingsbury: ... tap the three horizontal bars to the right of the share options and you can reorder them so that the ways you like to share things, like photos, will ... The ones you use the most will be the first ones you see.

Donna Cleveland: Oh, that's cool. I never knew that.

Sarah Kingsbury: If none of those work, a hard reset is always a great idea. It's not always a great idea, but it's a great last resort, so just hold the side button and the down volume button for about 10 seconds until an Apple logo appears and then that will ... It's basically like if you were rebooting your computer, it's just any weird bugs might disappear. It's always a good idea if your phone starts acting really buggy, although that's not really helping me with my IOS 11 issues, but that's a different thing.

David Averbach: It is a good ... I definitely agree with that. We get a lot of people who email us with questions and we say, "Try restarting," and they go, "Okay," and then it works, especially if it's-

Sarah Kingsbury: Restarting and doing the hard reset are not the same thing.

David Averbach: Ah, so explain the difference.

Sarah Kingsbury: Okay, so restarting is you just turn your phone off and then turn it back on again. The reset is really like ... It's kind of the difference between putting your phone to sleep and ... Not your phone, your computer, because of course, just you can just locking your phone will put it to sleep, but on a computer, when you ... It might really be like the difference between restarting it versus shutting it down and waiting a few minutes and then turning it back on. It just lets your whole device reset itself, so to restart your computer, I mean your iPhone or your iPad, you just press the side button until it ...

Donna Cleveland: The Apple logo-

Sarah Kingsbury: ... turns off. Yeah, well, no it will say cancel or swipe to turn off and then ... That's how you just turn it off and then you can press the side button again to turn it back on, but to do the hard reset, like I said, you need to press simultaneously the side button and the down volume button until the Apple logo reappears.

David Averbach: Okay, okay. I personally found that if I just turn my phone of and turn it back on, that often can fix it.

Sarah Kingsbury: Right, and that's actually ... You should do that first.

David Averbach: Okay, so order of operations: first, see if you can solve the problem. If not, turn your phone off and then back on. If that doesn't work, then do a hard reset and if that doesn't work, email Sarah.

Sarah Kingsbury: Yes, if you're an Insider, you can email me. You can also ... There's a thing you can do, which sucks because you lose all your settings on your iPhone, but if things are really bad, you can restore your phone to the factory settings without losing your data. Then you'll have to put all your settings that you customized back, but if any kind of weird bug has been introduced into the operating system on your phone, this will take care of it. It's really a pain. You don't even realize ...

David Averbach: All the customization.

Sarah Kingsbury: ... all the customization you've done, because it gets passed on from device to device, but what happens is eventually as you update phones and you update operating systems, things can get a little wonky.

David Averbach: I will say that a lot of times these bugs get created by let's say customizing your phone gone wrong. Sometimes, people accidentally go into their settings and either change something they didn't mean to change or didn't realize they changed and oftentimes, that is what then something they expected to be in a certain place is no longer there, something like that. There is a time and place to reset all your settings, because a lot of times you've actually been the one that accidentally created the problem in the first place.

Donna Cleveland: I think we have some articles that can guide you through how to do that, so we could link to that in our blog post, if you go to iphonelife.com/podcast. Yeah, as part of your Insider subscription, Sarah can help you when you come up with specific issues like this. Go to iphonelife.com/insider to sign up for that. Next, we want to jump into our new segment and that is Apple Watch related too. This is the Apple Watch episode, apparently. That's about the new Apple Watch Series 3, that has a cellular, it's the LTE and GPS version and it's been having some problems with connecting to cell networks. We wanted to talk about that a little bit and whether or not that's something you should be worried about if you're considering buying the Apple Watch.

Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah, so The Verge and I think it was the Wall Street Journal, but I'm not totally sure. Both of their reviewers had trouble with the handoff between wifi and then cellular, because what would happen is they'd be walking around without their phone and there's so many different wifi signals, and apparently there was some kind of issue where they weren't joining the wifi signals. They were walking by it, but it was interfering with the watch's ability to just be on cellular.

Donna Cleveland: They were trying to connect to unknown networks, but they were successfully connected, so therefore you just didn't have anything.

Sarah Kingsbury: Apple actually came out and said, "Yes, this is a problem," which they don't always do.

David Averbach: As a rule, I tend to be more concerned about hardware bugs than software bugs, because they're so much harder to fix. With software bugs, especially something that isn't a major bug, I agree with you, it's Apple will likely fix this prior to it shipping or very soon after it ships. One thing that I find that actually happens to me all the time already is I find that Apple will ... My iPhone will stay connected to wifi long after the wifi works for me. Have you had this problem?

Donna Cleveland: Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

David Averbach: Like if I'm driving away from my house, what happens to me almost every day is I'll turn on a podcast and I'll do it from my car, which is a little bit out of range from my wifi signal, but it tries to stay on range and I kind of have to wait until I drive around the block and get surprisingly far away before my LTE kicks in.

Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah, and I live a block from my parents, so that's a problem too, and I'm connected to your wifi too, so I drive down and David lives within a block of my parents too on the [crosstalk 00:14:50].

Donna Cleveland: We live in a small town.

David Averbach: Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury: I have to be far away, because I'm just connecting to everyone's wifi. It's ridiculous.

David Averbach: I have the same thing. I know a lot of people on my block and as I drive by, it tries to connect, it messes my whatever I'm trying to do and then I have to start over. It is, I guess I'm vaguely more concerned because I think Apple hasn't mastered it on the iPhone, let alone ... I've made it this far, so ...

Sarah Kingsbury: Okay, so should we talk about who should get which Apple Watch?

David Averbach: Yes.

Donna Cleveland: Yes, definitely.

David Averbach: I think a good starting point is who should get an Apple Watch and then we could talk about which ones.

Donna Cleveland: Okay, yeah, to answer that question, I would say that it is a bit of a different ... It's a different landscape now than it used to be, now that you can buy an Apple Watch with the cellular connection. I would tell you before the Apple Watch Series 3 came out with cellular, that really you should consider an Apple Watch if you are interested in tracking your fitness and that's about it, because the third party apps haven't historically worked that well. Having to be in range of your iPhone just limits the situations you'd use it, so it doesn't become habit as much, but the fitness tracking is awesome and it's way better than any other fitness tracker I've ever used. Now, this does bring it into a bit of a different category, because you can make calls, you can receive notifications, play your entire Apple music library, without being in range of your phone. I would say that this makes it appealing to people who are active and want to be less connected to their phones all the time and that's appealing to them.

David Averbach: I will say, I think I've been in disagreement on this point. I think you two both feel that the primary purpose of the Apple Watch is the fitness tracker.

Sarah Kingsbury: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Donna Cleveland: Right.

David Averbach: Personally, I somewhat use my fitness tracker, but I don't use it that often. I like it, but when I'm working out, I don't like that my Apple ... Sometimes, I like having it one, but sometimes it just feels like sweaty and gross, so I often take it off for my fitness before working out.

Donna Cleveland: That's so funny, yeah.

David Averbach: To me though, I love my Apple Watch for all the other things I guess you guys don't seem to care that much about.

Sarah Kingsbury: I do care about them actually.

Donna Cleveland: I don't care about them.

David Averbach: Okay.

Donna Cleveland: You can accurately say that.

David Averbach: So Donna doesn't care. To me, the biggest reason why I like my Apple Watch is that it allows me to quickly and easily access my notifications without taking my phone out of my pocket. That doesn't sound like a big deal to some people. Apparently, it isn't a big deal. To me, it makes a big difference in my lifestyle, because I really like to be out and present with people and not have my phone out and yet, still, if I'm getting notifications and it's in my pocket, I'll get worried like, "What's going on? Do I need to check it?" Whereas, on my Apple Watch, I can quickly glance at it and go back to the conversation, and it lets me access really quick, easy information without taking my phone out as well, like what's the temperature or like what do I have in my calender coming up, things that I can quickly, easily navigate to that don't involved much third party app that allow me to be more present with my surroundings.

Sarah Kingsbury: I would agree definitely. It's funny how annoying it is to check your phone out to check the weather, because it's not like you can put it so it's on your iPhone screen and I don't know why you can't do that, Apple, but yeah, so having to go through a couple steps in addition to pulling your iPhone to check the temperature or weather in the next few hours before you leave your house is really annoying.

Donna Cleveland: I agree that there definitely is a benefit there, even though, for me, it's not a strong enough benefit to buy the Apple Watch for that reason, but it is nice, because sometimes I'll go to check the weather on my phone and you'll get sucked in a rabbit hole of, "Oh, I have a millions notifications that I don't really want to look at right now, but now I don't even remember why I'm looking at my phone anymore." Whereas, if you just glance at your wrist, that's nice. I was just going to say I do think that being able to do all those things you're talking about without having your phone in range is even cooler.

David Averbach: Yes, it definitely is cooler. I think last point before we get onto which of the many Apple Watches are right for the right people, I have a hard time and I think Apple also has a hard time explaining the convenience of it. Like Sarah was saying, it doesn't sound like a big deal to be able to take your phone out of your pocket and check the weather, and it's not, but if you're ... There's 10, 20, 30 times a day that I need to check something that I can do on my Apple Watch instead of taking my phone out and it adds up. It's a similar feeling to if you're an iPad owner. There's nothing really that your iPad can do that your iPhone or your computer can't do, but there's a certain use case of browsing the web, doing things for entertainment, where it's the right form factor for that. It's the convenience of that makes it worth it and I end up using my iPad way more than my computer because of that. Similarly, there's nothing that I can do on my Apple Watch that I can't just take my iPhone out to do. Now, obviously that changes with cellular, but-

Sarah Kingsbury: Well, except for fitness tracking.

David Averbach: Yeah, thanks. That's a good point. Fitness tracking certainly is a premier feature and I'm not arguing with that, but the other things really do make a big difference to me.

Sarah Kingsbury: I think actually what really makes the Apple Watch stand out is the combinations of the fitness tracking and the really amazing way that Apple has integrated all of these convenient features from your phone and then put them in one device.

David Averbach: Yes.

Sarah Kingsbury: It's really spectacular.

Donna Cleveland: Let's get into the way we've split this one up, instead of saying should you buy this one or should you buy that, we have instead who should buy the Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular, who should just buy the Series 3 with GPS, because they have two Series 3 models and then the last series that Apple now offers is Series 1. They don't offer Series 2 anymore. Also, who should buy that one, and the prices here, we've got $399 starting price for the Series 3 with cellular.

Sarah Kingsbury: That's the 38 millimeter.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah, so you're going to probably end up spending more than that if you want to get a bigger one or one with a different band. The Series 3 GPS starts at $349 and the Series is-

Sarah Kingsbury: $329.

Donna Cleveland: Oh, $329, and the Series 1 is $249, I believe.

Sarah Kingsbury: Right.

David Averbach: Let's start at a weird place which is which size you should get.

Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah, I really like the bigger size. It has better battery life, but it looks ridiculous on my. If I had a bigger wrist, I would get the bigger one.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah, I think this comes down to how big of a person you are.

David Averbach: Yeah, I think it comes down to wrist size. I think that if you have ... It looks a little bit awkward if you have a really small wrist, but if you have a bigger wrist, then it works, not that this is universal, but it does tend to split between men and woman. I don't have particularly big wrists for a man, but it fits pretty well on my hand, so I think that for most men, I would recommend the larger Apple Watch.

Donna Cleveland: I have seen some women at the gym that I know who do have the 42 millimeter and it works really well on them too, so yeah, I think it's one of those things you kind of have to try on, same as sunglasses. You might just know that you're a small person and that the 42's going to be ridiculous. If you have questions, go to an Apple store and try some on.

David Averbach: If you're a particularly small person, you may want to try on, see if the smaller one works for you. One of our editors, [Rayann 00:22:25], doesn't like wearing the smaller one, because even that doesn't fit her quite right.

Donna Cleveland: She described it as a prison tracking bracelet. She has the smallest wrists I've ever seen, and the Apple Watch looks hilarious on her. It really, really does. I would say that the Apple Watch Series 3 cellular is for people who've been all along wanting a smart watch that can replace their iPhone in some ways. You're still going to need an iPhone.

Sarah Kingsbury: I have one problem with the Apple Watch cellular and this is a problem actually I have with ... There's so many cellular things now, like I was testing out the Whistle pet tracker, which is really awesome. I have a dog who manages to run away at least once a week and even though I'm really careful, he's still like, "Whoo, I'm gone!" Being able to know where he was, really helpful. You know, that's $10 a month for that cellular tracking and then you have an Apple Watch now. Initially we recorded that Verizon would be offering it for $5, but they actually gave us incorrect information and like most carriers, it's going to be $10 a month.

Donna Cleveland: I'm so bummed about that.

David Averbach: That's annoying.

Sarah Kingsbury: What I want to know is how come I can't just pay Verizon - that's my carrier - for a certain amount of data each month. I share it with my family, who are on my plan. Why can't I also share it with the different devices I have.

David Averbach: Yeah, why do they charge per device in addition to for data usage.

Sarah Kingsbury: Because I don't know ... The tiers between the data are such that I really ere on the side of like a slightly bigger data plan than I need and I know I won't be using that much data if I get the cellular Apple Watch and so there's going to be all this data I'm not using and I'll be paying for a whole different cellular plan and it just makes me mad. I also think that it's not going to be ... I think they're going to have to change the model as we have more devices that will have cellular capabilities. It just doesn't make sense to be paying for so many different cellular plans.

David Averbach: I completely agree. I think the challenge is the carriers have decided that what people care about is unlimited, which personally, I don't particularly care about. I just want enough, especially because with unlimited, eventually they start to slow down your data and it's basically unusable, so you're kind of trying to figure out where your-

Donna Cleveland: Not really unlimited.

David Averbach: Yeah, but you can't have unlimited data and have unlimited devices on that data, unless you're charging a lot. It's like because they're focusing on unlimited, that's why they're charging per device, but I agree with you. It's really not going to use that much data and I don't want to pay $10 a month. It's already more expensive as an Apple Watch and when you're factoring in, you're paying $120 a year on top of that. That's really a big barrier. You have to really want to not have you iPhone with you to make that work.

Donna Cleveland: Yeah, and my husband falls into this category where he complains all the time about having a phone addiction, but he, for his job, needs to be able to check on things. Pretty much, he has to have his phone with him all the time. This will allow him to not have to have his phone with him and so that's something that he's willing to pay for. I don't think for myself I'm actually going to get it, because for me, fitness tracking is still the most important thing. The Series 1 or the Series 3 GPS would be right for the person like me, whereas that cellular connection would be worth it for someone like him.

Sarah Kingsbury: I'm really thinking I'm going to get the Series 3 GPS, because ...

Donna Cleveland: Why is that? Yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury: Well, one thing I don't really care about streaming music. I have a ridiculous amount of music on my phone already and I can transfer those playlists that I use just for working out and I could ... I don't-

Donna Cleveland: To your Apple Watch?

Sarah Kingsbury: Exactly.

Donna Cleveland: Is that not a huge pain though?

Sarah Kingsbury: No, it's really not, because now with Watch OS 4, you can put multiple playlists.

David Averbach: That is the big deal, yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury: Before you can only have one playlist and so that made it useless and you had to have your phone with you the whole time. Now, if you can have multiple playlists and ...

Donna Cleveland: Oh, that's cool.

Sarah Kingsbury: ... it's so much easier to access those playlists from within the workout app. You can actually just swipe left on your workout screen and then you can adjust your music and swipe back to your workout screen, which is fantastic.

Donna Cleveland: Very cool, yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury: Unless I'm out running way out on a trail somewhere where it would be a good idea for me to be able to call someone if I hurt myself or something, it's not a big deal for me.

Donna Cleveland: That is really cool too, because with the Series 3 GPS, you can listen to music, but you also are getting a bigger battery than in the Series 1 and you're not wasting that on the cellular connection, because I was reading a tear down of the Apple Watch Series 3 and the battery is bigger. That was something that Apple didn't really address at the announcement. It's not significantly bigger, but it is bigger.

David Averbach: I think a good use case for the cellular, another good use case, because I think it's good to give a few of them. Different people are just going to fall in different camps in this. Our COO, Noah, he coaches soccer and he ... So he's out coaching soccer for a couple hours every day, and he doesn't want to have his phone on the sidelines because he's coaching soccer to, I think, lower school children who are-

Donna Cleveland: He doesn't want his phone to get stomped on.

David Averbach: Trample on it. Also, it's ...

Donna Cleveland: With soccer cleats.

David Averbach: ... it's debatable whether he would be within range or not on the soccer field. For him, this is the first time he's actually interesting in it, because it gives him an ability to have cellular connection, get text messages while he's doing an activity where he couldn't do that before.

Sarah Kingsbury: Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Donna Cleveland: My kids were part of that same soccer league, and there is no cellular connection at some of those fields and a watch [crosstalk 00:28:02], but I do think that kind of taps into both Noah and my husband are people where that freedom, this freedom that you get with the Apple Watch Cellular is something that appeals to a lot of people.

David Averbach: Yeah, I will, if you're not an Apple Watch user, I will warn you, it is very convenient for a screen that small, but it's not perfect. If it's your only device you're carrying with you and you're trying to carry a text message conversation or send an email, you can do it, but you're going to get frustrated if you're doing regularly.

Donna Cleveland: That's honestly one of the reasons I'm not going to get it. I didn't think to mention that, but I don't really like texting on it. It's a little bit annoying, but for things like checking the market, which is what my husband'll be doing, just checking that or making calls when you need to, it'll be fine for that.

David Averbach: Yeah, and quick text, it gives you presets that are pretty good or quick yes, no, maybe, but like a long conversation-

Sarah Kingsbury: You can customize those.

Donna Cleveland: It's important, yeah.

Sarah Kingsbury: A long conversation when you basically write it out with your finger and I know a pretty funny misunderstanding where I was trying to explain to my boyfriend that I couldn't text right now because I was running and he was like, "You're in rehab? What?" Yeah, it's-

Donna Cleveland: That's amazing. You haven't told that one. That's a great tech mishap.

Sarah Kingsbury: It just happened last night, so yeah, you can't ... You have to get really specific with those preset messages, but also, customizing them is and getting accurate text messages through what they call the scribble is kind of hard. Do you want to talk about who might not want to get the newest Apple Watch, who might want to save some money and get the Series 1?

Donna Cleveland: The series 1.

David Averbach: Yes, I think the truth is it's a really ... As much as we try to avoid framing it this way, it's a budget consideration. The only reason to get the Series 1 over the Series 3 with GPS is if you're trying to save money. If you're only focused on fitness-

Donna Cleveland: And if you don't swim with it.

David Averbach: If you don't swim with it, if you're only focused on fitness, but don't mind having your ... Let's put it this way: if you're only focusing on fitness and don't care about the GPS feature, either you have your phone with you or you don't track it, then it's fine. Even then, because I have the Series 1, the processor is not as good. Really I'm having a hard time recommending it for anybody.

Sarah Kingsbury: Really? I disagree, because do you have the Series 1?

Donna Cleveland: You have the original. [crosstalk 00:30:19].

David Averbach: Oh okay, so I know, but is it really-

Sarah Kingsbury: The series-

Donna Cleveland: It is different. It's different.

Sarah Kingsbury: The series 1 has a better processor in it.

David Averbach: How much better [crosstalk 00:30:26].

Sarah Kingsbury: I have some-

Donna Cleveland: It's better enough that it can use the new heart rate monitor features that the original Apple Watch is not able to.

We've helped you decide in this episode, which of these Apple Watched might appeal to you based on the different types of people we've represented here. Hopefully we've helped give you an idea. We would love to hear from you though. Which Apple Watch are you planning on buying? Are you planning on upgrading from a current Apple Watch? Are you a first time buyer? You can email us at podcast@iphonelife.com. We'd also love to hear if there are any considerations that we didn't cover. We look forward to hearing from you and we will see you next episode.

David Averbach: Thanks, everybody.

Sarah Kingsbury: Thanks, everyone.

Donna Cleveland: Thanks.

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