Apple Watch users might lose a feature for the same reason the Galaxy S Pen lost Bluetooth

The watchOS 27 beta is missing Walkie-Talkie, the fun app that let users speak to each other using their smartwatches in real time. There is the very real possibility that Apple will remove this app from the Apple Watch this year, and the reason behind it seems to be the same one that Samsung cited when it removed Bluetooth from the Galaxy S Pen.

Walkie-Talkie doesn’t have many users

Samsung said that it removed Bluetooth from the S Pen with the launch of the Galaxy S25 Ultra because of low user engagement. Only one to five percent of Galaxy flagship owners were actively using the Bluetooth features on their S Pen according to the company.

In a recent poll, we asked you whether you ever use the Walkie-Talkie app on your Apple Watch. Only around 13 percent of voters said that they use it all the time. Meanwhile, only around 15 percent of you said that you use the app occasionally.

A forgotten Apple Watch feature

On the other hand, over 26 percent of respondents said that, though they had tried the Walkie-Talkie app a few times, they didn’t actively use it. Most of you, a little over 32 percent to be precise, said that you had never used the app at all.

As a final nail in the coffin, almost 13 percent of users — the same percentage of people who use the app all the time — said that they didn’t even know that this app existed. What about you? Which camp of Walkie-Talkie users do you fall in?

This might be Apple’s fault

On paper, the Walkie-Talkie app sounds like a pretty fun idea, in my opinion. However, ever since the app’s launch, Apple hasn’t made any revisions to it or improved it in any meaningful way.

The fact that so many people didn’t even know that this app exists shows how poor of a job the company has done at marketing it. Is it any wonder, then, that the Walkie-Talkie feature has low user engagement?

Not as bad as the S Pen, though

However, if 28 percent of Apple Watch owners are using the app, that is a lot more people engaging with it than the number of customers who used Bluetooth on the S Pen.

I don’t think that Apple should discontinue something that almost 30 percent of the user base is actively interacting with frequently. Not every app and service can have a massive success rate.

Though if the Walkie-Talkie app does disappear from your Apple Watch, you at least have alternative methods for sending voice messages to your contacts. Samsung users can’t really substitute Bluetooth features for the S Pen, can they?

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