iOS Non Celluar Apple watch tracking working (sort of) without phone connection..how?

raksrules

raksrules

Level N
So here is what happened. My wife has an iPhone and apple watch SE. Today, she had to go somewhere and I dropped off her to metro station and she forgot her phone in car.
The watch she was wearing is Apple watch SE and it is NOT cellular version. So it needs the phone to fully function.
Now I know the watch can connect to previously connected wifi so even if you don't have phone around, it be online in limited capacity.
what surprised me most was that in "Apple FindMy", I was getting updates on her location periodically. The watch was showing with screen off in find my which sort of indicates it is offline. But still every few min as she was moving in metro and even when she was not in metro.
Mumbai metro doesn't have wifi or anything.

I am puzzled as how this was working and I am very confused. No real time location was shown but if i kept the find my app open in my phone, every few minutes her watch locarion would update and it was accurate too.
Anyone has any explanation?
 
You discovered another beauty of iOS devices, similarly the apple air tags works, nearby iOS devices relays the airtag's information to apple servers, so the owner of the airtag can see it's live location.

You can turn off this functionality if you wanted to, by turning off the wifi and bluetooth from within the settings and not from the control center, now your iPhone won't relay this information because it won't be able to find any.

And most people don't turn off their wifi/bluetooth and even when they do, they do it form the control center, which I guess puts in a specific state where the wifi/bluetooth is not available for your phone but it is available for tracking the other devices.

Fun fact - you can also setup the tracking behavior to automatically notify you when your loved ones leave or arrive at a specific location or you can also ask siri about them. The beauty is you can set this up once, and it will work in all of your future devices, once you log in with the same apple ID. You basically never have to set it again ever.
 
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roadrash99 said:
As long as the watch is near any Apple device (not necessarily your devices), it will show in the findmy network. Apple devices are constantly scanning nearby bluetooth and UWB devices and that information is used by Apple to find your device's location.
Click to expand...
I thought this was applicable only for airtags. This is watch SE which we got 2.5 years back.
 
raksrules said:
I thought this was applicable only for airtags. This is watch SE which we got 2.5 years back.
Click to expand...
It will also work for iPhones, even when they don't have any sim in it. From iOS 15 I believe the iPhone can send it's location even when it is completely off, thanks to low power bluetooth that stays on, and it's signals will picked by the other nearby iPhones.

Unrelated - While we are on topic of iOS cleverness, check this, android is so behind in this aspect.

 
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raksrules said:
I thought this was applicable only for airtags. This is watch SE which we got 2.5 years back.
Click to expand...
The watch SE doesn't have UWB which allows for precise positioning down to which part of the room it is in, but it does have bluetooth so you will still get coarse location data (10m range). All apple devices are part of the findmy network as pretty much every device has bluetooth. Must have been a demand from the CIA.
 
Heisen said:
You discovered another beauty of iOS devices, similarly the apple air tags works, nearby iOS devices relays the airtag's information to apple servers, so the owner of the airtag can see it's live location.

You can turn off this functionality if you wanted to, by turning off the wifi and bluetooth from within the settings and not from the control center, now your iPhone won't relay this information because it won't be able to find any.

And most people don't turn off their wifi/bluetooth and even when they do, they do it form the control center, which I guess puts in a specific state where the wifi/bluetooth is not available for your phone but it is available for tracking the other devices.

Fun fact - you can also setup the tracking behavior to automatically notify you when your loved ones leave or arrive at a specific location or you can also ask siri about them. The beauty is you can set this up once, and it will work in all of your future devices, once you log in with the same apple ID. You basically never have to set it again ever.
Click to expand...
somewhat related to location mapping handling by Apple - We have a bunch of security cams at home that are normally in streaming mode.
However if no one from the family is at home, they automatically switch to presence detection and recording on icloud .

I guess the way it works is if the primary phone of any family member is in the house , it remains in streaming mode .. and flips to detection and recording if all phones are away (leaving ipad/laptop etc doesn’t count)

I had not even realized this till recently
 
Learned something new today. Thats pretty cool. One question - I sometimes switch off the WiFi on the watch. The “Find My” feature would still work, right ?
 
mayank4823 said:
Learned something new today. Thats pretty cool. One question - I sometimes switch off the WiFi on the watch. The “Find My” feature would still work, right ?
Click to expand...
Yes, as mentioned above, even switched off devices can use low power Bluetooth for tracking.
www.apple.com

iCloud - Find My

Easily locate your Apple devices, items with an AirTag, third-party products that work with Find My, and friends and family. All with the Find My app.
www.apple.com
 
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