Migrated to iPhone 17 and Paired AW10. Need to go back to iPhone 15, how do I pair to old phone?

[MitzEclipse]

Some of my company apps aren't ready and I need to go back to my old iPhone 15. No issue with the data as I never deleted anything, I just did the migration wizard to transfer data to my iPhone 17. As part of the wizard, I transferred the pairing of the AW10 to the iPhone 17.

I want to go back to the Iphone 15 and will just delete everything and start over on the iphone 17 when ready. How do I transfer the AW10 back to the iPhone 15? I went into Watch app on the iPhone 15 and tried to pair but won't let me. Reading on some of the support links it says I can only have one iPhone paired to the watch.

If I remove the pairing from my iPhone 17, will this delete everything on watch? I know I need to do a back up, however, the back up would be on iOS26 and the iPhone 15 is on the older 18.6.2. How do I restore the watch?

 

[MitzEclipse]

seems like there is no backwards compatibility on the AW backups so the only way is to upgrade the iPhone 15 to iOS26 so I don't lose the AW settings?

 

[ikramerica]

seems like there is no backwards compatibility on the AW backups so the only way is to upgrade the iPhone 15 to iOS26 so I don't lose the AW settings?

Is the data on your watch that important that you can’t use the last backup in your 15?

You can just unpair the watch from the 17 and pair it again to the 15 and restore the watch from your last backup there.

 

[MitzEclipse]

thank you was thinking worst case scenario - was able to restore back to the iPhone 15. Issue now is my calendar is not syncing! I will post in a different thread