Moving to a new iPhone with Apple Watch S3 LTE?

[le.bouch]

I have an iPhone 8 Plus and Apple Watch S3 LTE.

I’ve actually just sold the iPhone and have a new IPhone X coming in a few days.

The problem is that I have to mail my iPhone 8 Plus tomorrow so will be without for a few days.

Can I just backup, erase and mail the iPhone, then purely rely on the watch for a few days? I figure it will work just as if the phone was turned off?

I hope I can then just restore the new iPhone X from my 8 Plus backup and everything will be back to normal...

Is that hopelessly naive?

 

[big samm]

I think it’s possible, but im not sure but i think the phone must be powered on if you wanna receive calls and texts, i know iMessage and FaceTime audio will work regardless if the phone is on or off
just not sure for normal calls and texts

 

[CobraPA]

You may lose some content from the watch... a backup is kept with your iPhone backup, but only seems to be guaranteed to be complete if you unpair the watch before storing the iPhone backup. You will have to reset the watch to pair it with the new phone when you get it. (At least I hope that works, I have never tried it without unpairing first, which you can't do if you erase the iPhone first.)

 

[le.bouch]

So in the end I bottled it and did it the correct* way - I was scared about messing up my EE data plan.

* unpaired watch, which backs up watch to phone. Turned watch off :-(
Backed up phone to iTunes (would also work to iCloud).
Wiped and dispatched iPhone to new owner.
Used my old 5s for a few days.
Got new X, updated to 11.2, restored from iTunes backup.
Paired watch to phone, restoring watch from backup when prompted.
All worked fine.

 

[CobraPA]

Nice

 

[Sebby]

I’ve done this a few times and it’s worked fine. I was convinced something would go wrong.