Bradley Chambers:

After thinking through the watch's role in our lives, I've finally settled on the fact that the Apple Watch needs cellular. iPhones are fantastic. They are great cameras, and they allow us to carry extremely powerful computer in your pocket. I do see a day coming when I would leave my iPhone at home for periods of time.

I’m 100% behind this thinking. Having the ability to use your smart watch totally independent from the phone fundamentally changes the usability of the watch. GPS is a good step towards this, but native watch apps combined with a persistent data connection is so powerful.

Here’s what I said about cellular when I tried to will it into existence back in August:

The data connection could be totally limited to Messages and phone calls, but that would be enough. If you’re going to tell people to leave their phones at home, it would be nice to give them an option to communicate in case of an emergency.