How to preserve fitness tracking data recorded after paired iPhone is lost?

[DoctorApple]

Long story short, I lost my iPhone on a trip. I didn't reset my Apple Watch to pair it with my spare phone because I could still get WiFi calling and iMessage to work with my primary number on my lost iPhone until I returned home.

Now I've discovered that fitness data is not synced to iCloud directly from an Apple Watch, rather it's through the paired iPhone. No new fitness data appears on my new replacement phone restored from the latest iCloud backup from the lost phone, or on the spare phone signed into the same Apple ID. I've tried to manually use WiFi on the Apple Watch but it doesn't sync any fitness data.

The Watch app on the replacement phone asks me to finish pairing my Apple Watch but the connection always fails. Is there a way to preserve the fitness data and possibly sync it to the new phone? Right now it looks like I'll have to completely erase the Apple Watch to pair it with the new phone.

 

[jz0309]

Long story short, I lost my iPhone on a trip. I didn't reset my Apple Watch to pair it with my spare phone because I could still get WiFi calling and iMessage to work with my primary number on my lost iPhone until I returned home.

Now I've discovered that fitness data is not synced to iCloud directly from an Apple Watch, rather it's through the paired iPhone. No new fitness data appears on my new replacement phone restored from the latest iCloud backup from the lost phone, or on the spare phone signed into the same Apple ID. I've tried to manually use WiFi on the Apple Watch but it doesn't sync any fitness data.

The Watch app on the replacement phone asks me to finish pairing my Apple Watch but the connection always fails. Is there a way to preserve the fitness data and possibly sync it to the new phone? Right now it looks like I'll have to completely erase the Apple Watch to pair it with the new phone.

Short answer, I am not aware that you can.
As you said, fitness data is synced from AW to iPhone and from iPhone to iCloud. Since your AW cannot communicate with your phone, all the data is on the AW.
And the conundrum, in order to pair it to a new phone you must reset the AW which wipes it out incl all fitness data.
Sorry.
You could go and take a note of all the data that is still on the AW and once paired to the new phone, enter that data manually into the Heslth and/or activity app, not sure how much of an effort that is though.

Maybe contact Apple support to see if there is a back door?

 

[Howard2k]

If you have a backup of the old phone (perhaps even an iCloud backup) could you restore that to the new phone? Would you then need to re-pair the watch? I'm not sure.


EDIT: Never mind, that's exactly what you did.