So currently using S22 Ultra cellphone with my Galaxy Watch Ultra. I can take bluetooth phone calls on my watch connected to the S22 - all good. I wanted to know what are pro's and con's of adding a LTE ATT number/line to my watch? So I would still be able to take bluetooth phone call from my S22 and possibly get a LTE phone call from my watch - so both? Also can I disable LTE functionality on my watch ultra if I wanted to save battery life on watch. Assuming having LTE enabled on watch will cause some additional battery drain on watch.
You can definitely disable LTE on the Ultra watch. As for subscription to a LTE for the watch, advantages are you would be able to leave your phone at home and still take calls and make texts. You can also use any app that uses data from LTE as well. I'm with TMobile, so it's number sharing for my line on my watch. Meaning, even though they give me a different number for my watch, I still get texts and calls from my phone number to my watch even if I leave my phone at home. Not sure about AT&T.
AT&T will also marry your watch line # to your phone line - All carriers do it. As @Rickets said, the main advantage of having the phone line is that you can leave your phone behind (run a quick errand, work out, etc.) and still get/make calls and texts and use Google Maps. The mobile network and mobile data and wi-fi on the watch are only active when you are not connected to your phone via BT and, so uses no battery power. The BT connection is always primary when connected. If you enable remote connection to your phone in the wear app, as long as your phone and watch have some form of network connection, they will communicate via the Google cloud (as long as both devices are logged into your Google account). That function uses a lot of battery power the longer you are away from your phone, but you will still get notifications from apps that are not native to the watch, but are on your phone. With remote connection your phone and watch do not have to be on the same network, since it operates through cloud services (your phone can be on wi-fi and your watch can be on mobile data). You can't really use remote connection without cellular data on the watch because, even if there are wi-fi hotspots or public wi-fi wherever you are going, those networks are not compatible with the watches since they don't have traditional logins (SSID & password).
All this to say, if none of the above is relevant to you, then there is no real reason to activate the LTE. However, I'm one of those who originally had a BT only watch and did not see a reason to spend an extra $20/month for watch service until I was in a situation where it would have actually been useful. Now I have it.
I have a Watch6 Classic LTE sharing a phone number with my Z Fold 5 on Google Fi. For some reason, if the phone is off, the watch is not capable of sending or receiving texts. Does anyone know if the Watch7 Ultra also has this problem or in a similar configuration, will it send and receive texts without connectivity to its paired phone?
