Anyone unable to pair AW3?

[prominence]

Hi friends - thought I'd drop a note here since I had a horrible experience trying to get my S3 Apple Watch. Local Apple Store got stock of Nike+ S3 Cellular 42 Crimson so I reserved and picked up in store. Took home and watch refused to pair with iPhone. Went back to store, exchanged for another of the exact same model they had in stock. 2nd watch refused to pair to phone as well. Wiped phone and reset network settings-- still would not pair with the 2nd watch. Store happened to have 3 of my desired model in stock so we tried the very last one in stock (I'm assuming at this point it's not going to work).. and BOOM, paired immediately. So my advice would be continue to exchange until you find one that will pair... not sure if this is a QA issue or what.. did not enjoy spending 2 1/2 hours in the Apple Store.. Apple dropped the ball on this one.

Edit: Before doing the first exchange I read this thread and removed my Gen 0 from my iCloud account and unpaired my Gen 0 watch entirely from my iPhone before even attempting to connect my 1st new watch when I got home; it did not work unfortunately.

Edit: My iPhone is an iPhone 7 Plus and was updated to the latest iOS 11 software.

 

[Diane B]

Oh, my—for all of us out here in the hinterland buying online and hours from an Apple store. My S3 LTE is due Friday and I had read that you could add a second watch and had not seen anything since IOS 9.3 that said you couldn’t—and they would switch back and forth. i have an O and don’t mind deleting it but had considered keeping both paired, wear new as my main watch. Interesting though I can’t find any other compliants about not being able to pair when googling for it. I eonder if there is any consistency in the watches some of you had issues with. I have 38mm LTE gold/loop band coming.
[doublepost=1508335123][/doublepost]That was complaint—so the proper way is to unpair within Watch app on phone, delete from list of devices in profile—but see no place to delete from icloud (assume we are both talking about deleting from profile list). I do not have handoff turned on for Watch but see no other place Icloud enabled for watch. I’m currently up to date on Watch OS and on my 6sPlus with IOS.

 

[nikhsub1]

I spent 2 hours on the phone with a senior apple tech trying to pair my brand new SS LTE watch... no joy, would not pair with 2 phones, one of which was fully reset. Neither phone was ever paired to a watch. Reset the watch several times, even restored. Tried pairing manually a dozen times too. Problem with the watch is my guess. Will be exchanging today.

Mine would say it paired, then 10 seconds later say that pairing failed and that the phone would unpair from the watch. In bluetooth settings of the phone it showed the watch as paired for a minute, then the phone would just unpair. Very odd.

 

[prominence]

I spent 2 hours on the phone with a senior apple tech trying to pair my brand new SS LTE watch... no joy, would not pair with 2 phones, one of which was fully reset. Neither phone was ever paired to a watch. Reset the watch several times, even restored. Tried pairing manually a dozen times too. Problem with the watch is my guess. Will be exchanging today.

Mine would say it paired, then 10 seconds later say that pairing failed and that the phone would unpair from the watch. In bluetooth settings of the phone it showed the watch as paired for a minute, then the phone would just unpair. Very odd.

This was the same error I was getting -- right past the "You're paired!" prompted and it moves to a "Connecting to your account...." or some script, then errors and says "Could not pair with your iPhone," then unpairs entirely. Exchange until you get one that works, if that's an option for you!

 

[matthew23]

I was having the exact same problem as OP last night, trying to pair a 38mm Nike/crimson S3. I would start the pairing process and it would fail, telling me to start over. Restarted phone and watch, tried everything. I surrendered figuring the watch was faulty and put it on the charger stand for the night.

This morning, planing to take it back and exchange, I decided to give it another shot. Lo and behold, it worked right away, first try. My theory is that the watch was not charged enough (at least over 50%) but because it was not set up, it was not telling me that (or it could have been a bug). So, after charging it fully over night, it worked perfectly and has stayed paired all day...hope this helps anyone...

 

[ejfontenot]

I was having the exact same problem as OP last night, trying to pair a 38mm Nike/crimson S3. I would start the pairing process and it would fail, telling me to start over. Restarted phone and watch, tried everything. I surrendered figuring the watch was faulty and put it on the charger stand for the night.

This morning, planing to take it back and exchange, I decided to give it another shot. Lo and behold, it worked right away, first try. My theory is that the watch was not charged enough (at least over 50%) but because it was not set up, it was not telling me that (or it could have been a bug). So, after charging it fully over night, it worked perfectly and has stayed paired all day...hope this helps anyone...

Thanks Matthew. But in my case the watch was charged overnight also. Tried that the next morning. Nada.

Glad it worked for you. So strange all in all.

 

[CobraPA]

I've paired 2 watches with an iPhone 7 successfully, so I don't think there is any need to unpair any old Watch or remove them from iCloud. I have a newer series 3 Nike+ paired currently along with an older Watch that is still running an older version of watchOS.

 

[ejfontenot]

I've paired 2 watches with an iPhone 7 successfully, so I don't think there is any need to unpair any old Watch or remove them from iCloud. I have a newer series 3 Nike+ paired currently along with an older Watch that is still running an older version of watchOS.

So do I. I still have a series 0 paired with my 7+. I think there are some watches with some serious glitches in them that prevent pairing.

 

[nikhsub1]

Update - went back to apple, exchanged the watch that wouldn't pair (no troubleshooting again in store, already spent 3+ hours on it) for a brand new one. This time I paired the watch at the store and it worked first try, no issues whatsoever. I guess there are issues with watches with pairing right out of the box...

My suggestion is to pair the watch in store if you buy it in store and you have the time.

 

[tgara]

I have a Series 0 running watchOS 4.0.1 that was paired with my iPhone 6S running 11.0.3. I tried pairing a new 42mm SS Apple Watch and had a small amount of difficulty. I did NOT unpair the old watch first, although the saleskid at the Apple Store told me to do that.

Anyway on the first try, the pairing of the new watch went smoothly up until the end. I did the scan thing with the phone, went through some of the settings questions, even added 3 credit cards to Apple Pay on the watch. Strangely, it never asked me for my Apple ID. Then it went about "syncing", which took about 10 minutes. However, at the end of that, there was a message on the watch that said push the digital crown to get started. But the digital crown never responded. Just sat there like a dead fish. Had to do a hard press to cancel out of the setup and try again. So, on the second try it went better... This time it asked for my Apple ID, went through adding the credit cards again, syncing again, then the press on the crown worked and the pairing was complete.

Now I have both my old watch and my new watch paired. I'll probably use my old space gray watch for exercise and save the new SS watch for everyday use.

 

[Diane B]

FOLLOW UP-gold/loop S3 LTE delivered on time yesterday and pairing with camera did not work so paired manually which did. However trying to set up cellular did not happen, greyed out in settings. Worked with Verizon and finally teleservice said it was set up, power up and all would be fine. Never happened—so some more work with V and finally trip to V store. Tech there was knowledgable, got set up in account, sharing, etc but nothing—we reset to factory, rebooted, took it out of profile (I had already unpaired S0 watch)—nothing after hour and half—with help from another tech. Spent a lot of time in sync, etc. He said they had had problems the first week but that was corrected as I knew—but finally said they didn’t have anything else to try—said one customer had had it pop up after 24 hours so I was hopeful but came home and googled for issues with setting up Verizon. Found several who said changing the option in settings in phone to data and voice worked—nothing, but decided to reboot—and voilá—got ability to set up cellular immediately and its been fine since.

Oh, BTW, Verizon said you could only have one watch paired to a phone but I had read differently, so have gone back and paired original to use occasionally and set up for switching—though S3 is so much faster, better battery, etc, I wonder if I will.

So—worth trying if you haven’t already reset—mine evidently has been set at default for data since I bought the 6sPlus. They didn’t catch that either—but now I’m a happy camper—calls go through when away from phone with no problem, voice is much stronger and battery after S0 is so much better—and have downloaded 2 long playlists for off phone with Air pods.

 

[ejfontenot]

Oh, BTW, Verizon said you could only have one watch paired to a phone but I had read differently, so have gone back and paired original to use occasionally and set up for switching—though S3 is so much faster, better battery, etc, I wonder if I will.

#fakenews

Been having 2 watches paired for over a year.

 

[bruinsrme]

#fakenews

Been having 2 watches paired for over a year.

FOLLOW UP-gold/loop S3 LTE delivered on time yesterday and pairing with camera did not work so paired manually which did. However trying to set up cellular did not happen, greyed out in settings. Worked with Verizon and finally teleservice said it was set up, power up and all would be fine. Never happened—so some more work with V and finally trip to V store. Tech there was knowledgable, got set up in account, sharing, etc but nothing—we reset to factory, rebooted, took it out of profile (I had already unpaired S0 watch)—nothing after hour and half—with help from another tech. Spent a lot of time in sync, etc. He said they had had problems the first week but that was corrected as I knew—but finally said they didn’t have anything else to try—said one customer had had it pop up after 24 hours so I was hopeful but came home and googled for issues with setting up Verizon. Found several who said changing the option in settings in phone to data and voice worked—nothing, but decided to reboot—and voilá—got ability to set up cellular immediately and its been fine since.

Oh, BTW, Verizon said you could only have one watch paired to a phone but I had read differently, so have gone back and paired original to use occasionally and set up for switching—though S3 is so much faster, better battery, etc, I wonder if I will.

So—worth trying if you haven’t already reset—mine evidently has been set at default for data since I bought the 6sPlus. They didn’t catch that either—but now I’m a happy camper—calls go through when away from phone with no problem, voice is much stronger and battery after S0 is so much better—and have downloaded 2 long playlists for off phone with Air pods.

I call BS....... I have a Series 0 SS, Series 2 Nike Silver and a series 3 Edition all on the same phone.
the great thing is when the phone automatically switches to the watch I am wearing.

 

[ejfontenot]

I call BS....... I have a Series 0 SS, Series 2 Nike Silver and a series 3 Edition all on the same phone.
the great thing is when the phone automatically switches to the watch I am wearing.

Bruinsrme, we all know that carriers have the worst technical info of all!

 

[Diane B]

Agree after a bit of issue pairing (but not awful) I repaired my original series. In truth, I don’t know if I will wear the space gray O because I so love the S3LTE—battery esp. but I can......