Smartwatch to Receive Calls Via WiFi (Android)

RBZ5416

This is the only functionality I require from a smartwatch. The Samsung Gear S3 seems to offer this but it's a bit pricey. Anything else out there that will do this?

When I say receive calls, I mean to actually answer them rather than simply receive a notification.

drdocmatt

As in audio, on the watch..? You want to speak to your watch like Michael Knight? Got the hair for it?

RBZ5416

Could have sworn half-term was last week...

drdocmatt

School kids don't know who Michael Knight is..

cosmicma

when you say wifi do you mean the watch will be connected to your home wifi or your phone used ad hoc or as a hotspot ?

smart watches like the gear 3 tend to connect to the phone via blue tooth rather than wifi and there are many alternatives on the market ranging from as little as £10 to the price of the gear 3

there are a multitude of Chinese watches that come in a couple of formats, there are the ones with the same or similar functionality as the gear 3 but they all tend to be based on the same chip sets
there are smart watches that take a sim and a memory card ( google DZ 09 ) which function as a stand alone phone or /and a communication device between your phone and the watch which will allow you to make or answer calls via the watch connected to your phone or fully independently via it's own sim but most of these do not have wifi

there is also the full blown android smart watches the are basically and android phone on your wrist with all the bells and whistles such as blue tooth, wifi , gps etc
these offer some connectivity with your phone but you cannot make or answer calls via the watch connected to your phone
the watch is more set up to be used as an independent phone rather than an accessory and the most it will do is receive notifications you cannot respond to them
again this is all done via blue tooth
if you are using something like viber via your home wifi and the watch connected to the home wifi this kind of smart watch will work as a viber phone, i imagine skype will be fine too but all sim call related stuff has to be done via it's own sim including SMS

the wifi calls bit has thrown me because most of these kind of watches connect via blue tooth
a little more info on what you intend using it for would be helpfull

RBZ5416

The Samsung Gear Fit 2 can connect to WiFi as well as BT. So if you wander out of range of BT, the watch connects to WiFi & continues to receive notifications. I'm assuming that the S3 does the same but also offers the ability to receive calls, as it has both a mic & speaker. Although it's hard to pin this down for certain due to different country variants containing e-SIMs, which appear unsupported in the UK.

Usage is that I live in a mobile signal black hole. Generally I can only receive a reliable signal with the phone by the bedroom window, which is out of BT & hearing range. This was leading to several missed calls/texts. The Gear will now notify me of an incoming call, but I still have a mad dash to get to the phone before voicemail kicks in. I can partially solve this with WiFi calling but then still need to have the phone within easy reach. I'm not one of those glued to their phone & inevitably whenever it rings, I will be far from it.

So the S3 seems to be the answer but I was hoping there may be a cheaper alternative. It's an annoyance I'd like to solve but it's not a £300 annoyance! I have no interest in apps or heartrate monitoring.

HeavenlyWarrior

There are some cheap Chinese smart watches on Ebay that you can get for £30 that do speaker calls on a watch, tethered from your phone.

cosmicma

via blue tooth but not over wifi

there even cheaper than that
DZ09 1.56Inch MTK6261D 533MHz TFT LCD Touch Screen Wrist Smartwatch

there's quite a lot of bells on that watch for 12 quid but no wifi

to be honest i'm not sure any of the smart watches including the s3 does wifi calling even though samsung advertises it does and has software to implement it but from what i can gather it doesn't really work

drdocmatt

Almost any smart watch allows you to answer a call (as in lift the receiver), but none allow you to have the audio streamed to the watch. I think the pebble time 2 was supposed to have WiFi before it got canned after fitbit bought them.

RBZ5416

Having finally got to try an S3 I thought I'd pop back & dispel the scoffing & misinformation that was posted here.

The UK version of the S3 does indeed allow calls to be made & received directly from the watch. Not just dialled or answered but full two-way voice conversation right there on the watch. But sadly for me, this only works with a bluetooth connection to the phone & not when connected by WiFi.