Family / Standalone Apple Watch can't use cellular when paired to phone with no cell service?

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Level 1

6 points

Family / Standalone Apple Watch can't use cellular when paired to phone with no cell service?

My son has an Apple Watch SE with Cellular. I have it activated as a device on Verizon. For about a year it has been paired with my phone as a Family Watch. All is well except for the missing features / management of a Family Watch. This week I decided to re-pair it with an iPhone SE 2nd Gen that I had as a spare. This iPhone doesn't have active cell service. As soon as I paired the watch the non-active phone as a primary watch the cell service on the watch stopped working. I went to Verizon store and they couldn't fix it. I then moved the watch back to a Family watch on my phone and within minutes the watch cell service started working again.

Is it true you can't have a watch with active cell when paired to a phone without active cell?

Apple Watch SE (2nd generation)

Posted on Jun 5, 2025 8:36 PM

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Answer 1

Ingo2711

Level 9

76,335 points

Jun 5, 2025 10:40 PM in response to hoyty

According to this article, you will have to have a carrier plan for your iPhone, that is used to set up Apple Watch For Your Kids, and the carrier also has to support this feature:

...

7 . Set up cellular and Wi-Fi

If your iPhone cellular provider supports Apple Watch For Your Kids, you can add the watch to your plan during this step.

If your carrier doesn't support Apple Watch For Your Kids, or you'd like to use a different carrier, select Not Now.* You can choose an alternative carrier from this list of supported carriers and contact them directly to set up your cellular plan.

Next, choose whether to share your current Wi-Fi network with the Apple Watch.

* Some corporate cellular plans don't support Apple Watch For Your Kids

...

copied from: Set up Apple Watch for a family member - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Ingo2711

Level 9

76,335 points

Jun 10, 2025 5:11 AM in response to hoyty

You will have to have an iPhone with a cellular plan, either for the Family member that has no iPhone, or your iPhone needs a cellular plan that supports the Apple Watch.

Apple Watch - Carriers - Apple

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Answer 3

hoyty Author

Level 1

6 points

Jun 9, 2025 8:30 PM in response to Ingo2711

I wanted to set it up not as a Family Watch but as a stand alone cell plan watch paired with an iPhone without a cell plan. That is what didn't seem to work.

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