How the Apple Watch can be your kid's phone with Family Setup By CNET

The Apple Watch can finally work without an iPhone, and I set it up pretty easily, but the only problem was my kit. For years, I've been wanting the Apple Watch to function without an iPhone to be something that could be standalone that you could give to somebody. They wouldn't have to set it up with an iPhone which makes it an accessory, and you have to pay up for all this extra stuff. Well, that's kind of sort of here with family setup. It is here if you're, a family member, and you want to give an Apple Watch to them and have them use it. Let's say it's a kid: let's say it's a relative uh, and it works surprisingly easily.

For the setup part, I've been thinking about setting my kid up with a phone he's 11. He doesn't have a phone yet, and I've been waiting to figure out how to do this. Well, would it be good to wear one on his wrist? I kind of thought that would be great because he wouldn't have distractions, and he'd be able to use that, while riding around and walking apple did set me up with an iPhone and an Apple Watch to try out with family setup, it's set up surprisingly easily. If your kid is in your family, with iCloud family sharing. Now that stuff gets set up separately, and you've got to make sure that first, your kid has an iCloud account, then you need to have an iPhone as the person who's setting it up.

And then, when you go into family sharing settings you make sure that their iCloud account is connected, and you're all part of this little family group. Once you do that, you then go into the Apple Watch app and right. There is an option for setting a new watch up for a family member. You just follow those steps. I did it and that's where you realize that the Apple Watch needs to be cellular.

So that's a thing and not just all cellular watches, particular ones. Apple Watch Series 4 with cellular the new Apple Watch, SE with cellular or the Apple Watch Series 6 with cellular the Apple Watch Series 5 with cellular. There are options there, but they're not super cheap options. So, if you're used to the idea of 199 Apple Watch, you're not gonna, get that here, the cheapest Apple Watch, SE with cellular, is 330 dollars. That's a lot.

That is a phone price. So I have a 40 millimeter Apple Watch essay that I tried setting up and once I did that I got through the steps, and you need to have a phone number that then gets assigned to that watch. So it turns it into a phone you're, also dealing with an extra charge. This is going to be a cellular device that will cost probably around 10 extra a month with your phone company. Now, if you're adding a line you're thinking about as a phone sure, but that adds to the overall price of the equation, then there's an interesting part which is health sharing.

Now that allows you to take whatever health data is being collected on that watch and allow you to monitor it. That is weird for a kid, but it's very interesting if you have an older relative, that you want to put this watch on, to monitor them and use it to see how they're doing that could be very, very useful, and now I thought it's time for my kid to use this now. My kid's, not a reviewer like, and he's not part of CNET, and I felt weird about this- I'm not going to like to push him to wear an Apple Watch. I don't need him to wear an Apple Watch. I was just curious if he wanted to, and he felt it was useful, so he did wear it when he went out for a walk, and he went for a bike ride, and it was really cool.

He could call in he felt comfortable about that. It felt it helped us let go and say: okay, go for that ride and uh. We need to do that more uh, but it was not something that he wanted to wear all the time. So we got to this point where I got home, and he wasn't wearing the watch, and I said oh you're not wearing the watch. He says yeah, I'm fine.

Do you sure don't want to wear it? I'm okay! So, okay, that's fine! He considers it like a phone when he goes out. He's going to wear it to have in case he needs to reach us. Furthermore, he doesn't like wearing it during the day and that's the thing we're starting to see the watch like a phone and I think a lot of people will they're setting it up for their kid. And then that brings up whether you want to just get them a phone because iPhones start for the iPhone SE or for ones you can get on sale pretty much in that price range watch or phone. There are fewer distractions on the watch, but it's not nearly as useful for all the other things you can do.

Apple did introduce this other crazy feature called school time. We're doing remote schooling right now and school time is a way to try to aim to improve focus. What it does is its kind of like sleep mode on the Apple Watch that locks everything out until you spin the crown to then come out of school time and open up the rest of the watch. So it just stays on this basic watch mode. But if your kid decides to unlock the watch, it will send a report to you, so you can see when they did that.

So then it's kind of like screen time, where you're able to monitor when they overrode that it's a little weird. Did it help my kid with focusing, I guess so. I don't really feel like he's gotten into fiddling with all the features I mean frankly, we're trying to get him to stop fiddling with all the stuff on the Chromebook that he's using for school. So there are a lot of distractions. It's not just a watch.

Just like the iPhone. You could track its location, so you can keep an eye on where they're at just in case um again, I have to kind of let go here a little with um, observing my kid and all the fitness stuff which they could use. But the interface is not kid friendly. You know my kid is 11 who's, smart and tech, savvy put it on and immediately felt confused, and he said I don't really understand how to use this thing. I have felt that way too, with the Apple Watch.

It is a confusing interface, and they really should create a kids mode or a mode for people who are older, who aren't as tech-savvy and take all those features, boil them down into the core things that you need to access, and you got to have the person actually wear it. So a kid's not necessarily going to wear their watch all the time. What do you do if they take it off? Well, welcome to being a parent and battery life? Well, the battery life takes a little of a dip apple, reported that the battery life is not quite the same because you're using cellular, and it's always going to be staying on and there's some tracking features. So 14 hours is what it's rated for. With the uh for the 40 millimeter.

I did find that the battery life was dipping a bit by the end of the day. The other thing apple introduced on Apple Watch with family sharing, is family cash, which is going to share stuff in a wallet. I can transfer stuff off to my kid to put on his watch, so he could spend it at uh, contactless payment terminals, that's a fun idea, but the thing is that, first, even if Apple Pay cash works on all the Apple Pay terminals, uh, which it's getting closer to, but is not necessarily the case. You have to wait to find a place that accepts contactless payment, and I'm not going to stores right now- and neither is my kid at the moment. So you know going into a store and swiping is not really a thing that we'd be doing, and I feel like.

I would just give him some cash and put it in his pocket to use in case of emergency because you just don't know at the other end if it's going to work. So while the idea of the cash sharing is intriguing, I feel like until we live in a fully cashless world. I wouldn't send my kid out with that, as his only emergency payment. I think you have to think of this. Basically as a really fancy alternative to a phone, maybe the prices will drop, which I would love, maybe they'll make it a little easier to set up for people to use on the interface side.

But I think this is a really overdue feature. It's something I've wanted for a while. Now I want the Apple Watch to be totally independent and to be able to be set up for anybody to use without an iPhone come on apple. You can do it next year. Let's do that.

Source : CNET