If you believe a post on reddit titled, "UPDATE: Apple Watch Series 3 LTE *CAN* Call Emergency Services without an associated phone plan", you can call 911 with a cellular/LTE powered Apple Watch even without having an active service subscription for cell service. Bug you might have to wait a while for the call to go through.

At first, the behavior seemed the same - it hangs on the "Emergency Services" screen. But the apple rep asked me to give it up to 5 minutes and see if anything changes or an error appears.

After almost three minutes of nothing, it started to ring, and 911 picked up.

I imagine this behavior is the same on older versions of watchOS also (like when I originally tested), I probably just didn't wait long enough. I still submitted my diagnostics, because really 2+ minutes for a call to start connecting seems extremely excessive, but the ultimate takeaway here is if you are somewhere without your phone and have to call 911, it WILL WORK, it's just slow.

If true, I see an LTE watch in my future. I run around with an old Android with a TextNow SIM in it in case I need it, but emergency calls only might be enough to finally leave that at home.

Labels: , ,