Can a smart watch replace a phone?

Looking for a way to minimise your phone screen time? While not a complete replacement, a smart watch can certainly help with your everyday online ventures, saving you from being stuck on your phone and giving you more precious time to live your life out and about.

Keep reading to find out what exactly a smart watch can help you with and learn for yourself whether it can replace your phone for you or not.

A relatively new piece of technology, a smart watch is a wearable device that in addition to telling the time, can be connected to your smartphone or the cellular network to perform a range of functions you’d normally use your phone for.

From calling and texting your loved ones, to streaming your favourite tracks, to acting as fitness trackers, a smartwatch can act as a pseudo-smartphone so you can spend less time doomscrolling and more time living in the moment. Wearing a smart watch may even reduce your overall screen time. 

Modern smart watches include a wealth of helpful features that may improve your quality of life, even replacing your smartphones at times.

Depending on the model, you may have access to even more features, but some general smart watch functions include:

• Call and text: You can use your smart watch to make and accept calls, as well as send and receive texts. You can do this on both cellular/LTE and Bluetooth smart watches, provided they are connected to your smartphone or have the right capabilities.
• Check notifications: You can link your phone to your smart watch and check notifications and alerts whenever you receive them.
• Track your health and fitness: Want to get on top of your fitness? A smart watch may be able to help with that with live fitness tracking of your movements and helping you set personal health goals. More advanced smart watches may have sleep, heart rate monitoring, menstrual cycle, blood oxygen level tracking.
• Play music: Provided it has a built-in speaker, you may be able to play and listen to music from your smart watch. Most smart watches allow you to download popular music streaming apps and link them to your account so you can control the music you play on other connected devices as well (such as your phone or a Bluetooth speaker).
• Set alarms and timers: Like any other digital watch, you can also use your smart watch as an alarm or a stopwatch. In fact, the vibrating wearable might help with waking you up to your alarm.
• Make payments with a digital wallet: Use your watch as a digital wallet to tap and pay. You’ll need to approve certain permissions on your watch before you can activate the digital wallet. Like your smartphone’s digital wallet, you can store compatible credit/debit cards, reward cards, and even transit cards on your smartwatch.
• Use a voice-activated assistant: Use voice-activated commands to use your smart watch, hands-free.
• Navigate with live directions: Enable your location and use your preferred map app on your smart watch. Depending on your settings, your smart watch may even ping you with travel instructions in addition to a map display.
• Control your smart home: Provided your smart watch is compatible, you can control your smart home devices with a few taps like a remote.

Many of these functions may require your connected smart phone to be nearby to work. But it means you can minimise your time spent browsing mindlessly on your phone and instead get things done with a few quick taps on your smart watch.

Unfortunately, smart watches are currently not as technologically advanced as smart phones so there are limitations on what they can do. It’s important to know these so you can go into using a smart watch with the right expectations.

• Limited battery life: Many smart watches don’t have the biggest battery life, lasting around one or two days after a full charge.
• Restricted typing: As you can imagine, the small screen on your smart watch makes touch typing difficult – instead, you may need to use the in-built voice-assistant to help you message and search. 
• Physical smartphone proximity: Some Bluetooth smart watch models may require physical proximity to a connected smartphone to work. 

Pairing your smart watch to your mobile phone means you can spend less time on your phone and use your watch to perform basic actions quickly and easily.

There are two main ways to pair your smart watch to your phone:

1. Bluetooth
2. Cellular network

In the case of a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth smart watch, you can simply open your phone’s Bluetooth settings and pair your watch to your mobile there. Bluetooth smart watches require you to be physically near your phone for it to stay connected with notifications and alerts.

If you have an LTE or cellular smart watch, you can connect it to your phone via an eligible LTE network (your smartwatch will need to have an eSIM for this to work). Cellular smart watches allow you to use your smart watch and stay connected while physically away from your phone, provided you have network connectivity.

If you are an Optus customer, you might want to consider Number Share, which allows you to share one mobile number with a compatible smart watch.

Optus Number Share lets you share your mobile phone number between your phone and smart watch through the Optus network (where there is coverage). This means you can use your watch freely without having to have your mobile phone on you.

Below are the basic things to know about Optus Number Share:

• Optus Number Share is $5 per month when you're on an eligible mobile service, or free of charge if you're on an Optus Watch plan
• You don't need a watch plan to activate Number Share
• Optus Number Share requires an eligible mobile service
• Your smart watch and phone must be compatible with Number Share for it to be successfully activated
• The smart watch must have an embedded eSIM
• Voice over LTE (VoLTE) functionality must be switched on your watch and mobile device
• You can activate or deactivate Number Share at any time via your watch app

Leave your phone and enjoy using your smart watch away from home with Optus Number Share. Activate via your watch app for $5 per month and stay connected to an eligible mobile service. If you already have an Optus Watch Plan, you can enjoy Number Share free of charge.

For more information on Optus Number Share, visit our support page.

Interested in picking up a smartwatch for yourself? Check out our range of smart watches or browse our deals for more.