The biggest F that you left out would be this… if the owner had disabled nearly all of the security settings that would be on by default. An Apple Watch isn’t going to make a phone call without somebody needing to unlock it first.
You don’t need to turn off any major security features on the iPhone to get it to make calls while the screen is locked, so all things equal, it seems weird it would work on one and not the other.
Huh. I just tried with mine and it will not make a call without being unlocked. I don’t know that I changed anything but I suppose I might have.
You’re talking about your iPhone, right, not the Watch? Do you have Settings > Siri > Allow Siri When Locked set to on? I think that’s the setting which enables locked calling on the iPhone.
No, I was talking about my Apple Watch. I don’t have it handy to test right now but when I looked at it earlier today, there was no way for me to make a call without unlocking it first.
Update:
The watch no longer displays anything - presumably because the battery has died. We have no way of charging it. Local Apple store is uninterested (perhaps because they’d like to sell the former owner a new one?).
It will be given to local police.