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JAWB25

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 14, 2016
35
5
I've gone through Apple support without resolution and was wondering if anyone else could test or is encountering this issue. I never experienced this until the most recent (or the last couple of OS updates - not sure exactly when this started, but it was recently).

I have Apple Watch SE (cellular edition) running watchOS 8.7.

When I answer a phone call on my watch, the watch automatically hands-off the call to the phone no matter what I try. It's a problem because I don't usually have my phone with me and, whenever I try to use the keypad from the watch, the numbers I press aren't recorded or passed to the phone to allow menu selection. In this way I'm unable to buzz in anyone who uses the apartment buzzer or respond to menu prompts from the doctor's office, etc.

I've unpaired, erased, and then repaired my watch with my iPhone. I've also turned off hand-off for the Apple Watch and it still hands-off the call and the keypad won't work.

BTW, I'm often connected with beats to the phone and listening to a podcast or Apple Music when the calls come through (and this is also how I've tested it myself by standing outside and testing with the buzzer). I do hear the music interrupted and can hear the call through my headphones, but again the watch phone app doesn't allow me to interact or send prompts to the call (e.g., buzz someone into the apartment).
 
I experimented with trying the watch to buzz myself into the apartment and the keypad in the phone app on the watch is responsive or sending the commands ONLY when I don't have headphones connected to my phone. If I have the headphones connected to the phone and click the green answer call button on the watch it immediately hands-off to the phone and I don't have the option to use the watch keypad to enter menu prompts. I turned off handoff and it still forces a handoff of the call from the watch to the phone... is this intended behaviour or a bug? It's incredibly annoying and not useful to automatically handoff the call to the phone. I usually don't have the phone with me at the time (i.e., in the bathroom) and therefore the call is useless to me at that point. If the keypad only works on the phone while I answered on the watch it's not working if I can't access my phone in that moment.
 
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