" the iPhone has to be on even if you leave it behind, it appears, even though the Watch has LTE. And make sure the iPhone has the VoLTE (4G Voice and Data) turned on..."
That's very interesting, and I hadn't realised that at all from the initial launch descriptions. Any idea why this is necessary, as it seems to go against the entire standalone nature of the watch. What is the watch actually using the phone for? And of course 1 hour talk time is laughable... I've heard conversations on my daily commute that haven't got past the 'Like, literally, O.M.G.!' stage within this time.
I agree with djstardust - iOS 11 does seem a bit of a mess. It seems sloppy, worse than iOS 10, and I can't quite put my finger on why. But Apple software generally is getting worse and worse - for example the iPhone's music app suffers with noticeable screen redraw flicker. Not the end of the world for sure, but also not the sign of well polished and tested code. The new jumbo headings in iOS 11 just look wrong. The new animations seem amateur somehow, like Microsoft's. The new control panel looks like it was built for 3 year olds. Years old bugs still aren't fixed. iTunes is still the Mr Creosote of media management tools. And so on... and so on...
The central QA seems to have gone - possibly because Cook is a glorified stock controller, so just sees numbers and profits everywhere, where as Jobs was a sociopath-visionary. I know it's sold well for its kind, but the Apple watch is a dull mess, and I still don't think Jobs would have sanctioned its release.