I have done this as well, but with series 4. Some notes:
- Apple Watch receives calls forwarded from your phone which creates a bunch of weird problems:
1) Imagine you’re at a bar and get a phone call. You need to either answer on your watch immediately on speakerphone which is means its hard to hear the caller and hard for them to hear you, and your conversation is not private. Or, dismiss the call, go outside, put your airpods in, hope they connect, call back, hope they answer, and hope the traffic isnt too bad around you because airpods do not have best mics.
2) connecting airpods really suck, especially at home. You have to have your phone in the charger for it to forward calls to your watch, so when you put on your airpods, they will likely connect to your phone, so you run to your phone, then your airpods “magically” connect to your watch all the while your caller is shouting “hello” into the void. Not ideal for work calls.
- I really hated not having a notes.app
- messages are kinda bad, especially if you’re non-english. And again, if you’re out at a bar and meeting someone, you cant really wait to get home to message back, you have to noodle around on the small screen.
- Your friends will tease you. I didnt mind, but its good to be prepared.
- its a teeny bit annoying wearing a tech-watch. Can get a bit hot etc.
- You need an iphone to update the watch. This really suck because you never really feel you actually let go of your phone, its a hassle updating over bluetooth, installing apps etc. I would LOVE an ipad/mac watch.app.
- You need Siri for many things, like maps.app, searching for certain things etc. It really sucks, like, completely unusable.
- doesnt work well switching from wifi to celluar. So many of the watches problems stems from connectitivty issues between wifi, bluetooth and celluar.
That said, i agree with every upside the OP mentioned. I will go back to watch+airpods again when it can work without an iPhone for calling and software updates. I think one new way to get around it is to setup watch with Family Setup. That way it can get calls without iPhone.
EDIT: what i can definitely recommend is ditching your laptop and replacing it with mac mini + ipad. Its really great to not have every work task be mobile.
As the article says you already shouldn't need your phone on for calls to forward with the ultra (may not have been true with the series 4 as you say, never had one). You do need it for other apps like slack notifications to work right and I don't see that changing.
Author here - I haven't tested using calls with my phone off, my understanding is it should work if you have wifi-calling enabled (from the first footnote here https://support.apple.com/en-us/108300, there's a discussion here where people got it to work https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252472503?sortBy=best). You are correct though that the phone needs to be turned on to send and receive text messages, I'll update the article accordingly.
And I agree with you that AirPods connecting to the wrong device is incredibly frustrating. It happens to me when I have my phone with me when both my phone and watch are unlocked, but it doesn't seem to happen at all when my phone is locked and under my desk. You can also turn off AirPods automatic switching, but not sure how well that works if you want it on between the watch and a laptop but not a phone.
My experience matches the articles calling claims, though I don't intentionally try to go without my phone I just left it at home on a work trip once and it lost charge halfway through.
- Apple Watch receives calls forwarded from your phone which creates a bunch of weird problems: 1) Imagine you’re at a bar and get a phone call. You need to either answer on your watch immediately on speakerphone which is means its hard to hear the caller and hard for them to hear you, and your conversation is not private. Or, dismiss the call, go outside, put your airpods in, hope they connect, call back, hope they answer, and hope the traffic isnt too bad around you because airpods do not have best mics. 2) connecting airpods really suck, especially at home. You have to have your phone in the charger for it to forward calls to your watch, so when you put on your airpods, they will likely connect to your phone, so you run to your phone, then your airpods “magically” connect to your watch all the while your caller is shouting “hello” into the void. Not ideal for work calls.
- I really hated not having a notes.app
- messages are kinda bad, especially if you’re non-english. And again, if you’re out at a bar and meeting someone, you cant really wait to get home to message back, you have to noodle around on the small screen.
- Your friends will tease you. I didnt mind, but its good to be prepared.
- its a teeny bit annoying wearing a tech-watch. Can get a bit hot etc.
- You need an iphone to update the watch. This really suck because you never really feel you actually let go of your phone, its a hassle updating over bluetooth, installing apps etc. I would LOVE an ipad/mac watch.app.
- You need Siri for many things, like maps.app, searching for certain things etc. It really sucks, like, completely unusable.
- doesnt work well switching from wifi to celluar. So many of the watches problems stems from connectitivty issues between wifi, bluetooth and celluar.
That said, i agree with every upside the OP mentioned. I will go back to watch+airpods again when it can work without an iPhone for calling and software updates. I think one new way to get around it is to setup watch with Family Setup. That way it can get calls without iPhone.
EDIT: what i can definitely recommend is ditching your laptop and replacing it with mac mini + ipad. Its really great to not have every work task be mobile.