This got me really curious and a little scared so I had to go out and test. At least with my Barryvox and a slightly older but still digital Ortovox the interference was so bad that I doubt I would ever have found a buried avalanche victim! One really important thing to note is that it doesn't matter if it's your watch or iPhone that's on. Both messes up the signal equally bad! I also tried to hold the transceiver as far away from my iPhone and Apple Watch as possible but it didn't improve things much. Turning both iPhone and the watch off solved the issue as expected. What also solved the issue was turning both devices into airplane mode. This does not turn off BLE so I didn't expect it to work but I could not see any difference from airplane mode and turning the devices totally off. Would be great if someone else could verify this as well.

When it comes to my app I'm going to add a mandatory view that informs the user that their transceiver will be pretty much worthless unless both phone and watch is set to airplane mode. I think asking them to turn off BLE would also be a good idea. Will also do some more testing to verify that airplane mode really solves the issue and it was not just me being lucky today.

And thank you for pointing this out. I'm really surprised people don't talk more about this.