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Can I upgrade an Apple Watch Series 4 to OS9 on a 6s?
- Thread starter steffi
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In fairness, the Watch requires iOS for pairing and there have been 7 generations of iPhone since that model by now… they are gonna drop the primary device at some point and that will of course affect the secondary device. At a certain point, they can be used but not upgraded any further.
Yeah, it sucks - but if you updated to watchOS9, it would probably have problems communicating with an older iOS.
From reading other people's experiences, it won't even let you upgrade to WatchOS9 until you have iOS 16 installed on your phone.
Yes, that makes sense - because watchOS 9 probably wouldn't work with iOS 15. One thing to remember is that Apple Watch is an iPhone companion device. Installing a watchOS that wouldn't be able to communicate with the iPhone because of an older OS wouldn't make sense.
WatchOS 9 will not work with iOS 15 - so if you were able to upgrade your watch and your phone can't load iOS 16, you'd be out of luck. Smart of Apple to not let that happen in the first place.
In OP's case, the 6s can't be upgraded to iOS 16, so her AW4 won't upgrade to WatchOS 9 until it's paired with a phone that has iOS 16 on it.
I made that … using my wife’s iphone 11 (updated to iOS 16) I updated the watch Nike edition series 4 to watchOS 9… but my primary iphone is a 7 Plus and I can not pair my watch with my phone … can I downgrade from WatchOS 9 ?
Exactly. Both devices still work as expected on iOS 15 & WatchOS 8. You might get additional updates to those OSs but probably only if they are security patches.