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Joe in Gladewater, Texas listens on KTBB and asked: “I’m wondering about Bluetooth on my Apple Watch. It seems to be very slow when it does it’s update. Are there different kinds of Bluetooth that speed up or slow down or just would work better? Seems like Wifi would be better than Bluetooth.”
Joe, Apple Watches have pretty up-to-date Bluetooth, so you’re probably on the newest standard already, or at least one of the newest ones.
They are also WiFi capable and will connect to known networks even when your phone is not around, so they should be capable of reasonably fast speeds based on the network alone.
In fact, starting with watchOS 6, Apple Watches can update themselves without needing their paired phone to be involved at all. You can run the full update from the watch with no phone around.
That means that they must be using WiFi to run the updates, at least the watchOS 6 and newer ones.
Having said that, Apple Watches also pretty underpowered devices and it’s likely that there’s more than just the connection speed slowing you down when it comes to your updates. The processor may be throttled just enough to keep the battery life acceptable, and that means that the watch may just need to take longer to process an update than you’d like.
Unfortunately, this does not seem like a connection or standard issue, just a limitation of a device that needs to make concessions due to it’s size, how much of a battery can fit into it, and how hot it can get before people start to worry about maybe having strapped themselves to some TNT.