New Series 4 Only Works on Wifi

[tekchic]

So excited to go from Series 0 to Series 4 today. Stayed at home on wifi all day. Watch/Phone both arrive around 12:30pm, I set it up and paired with no problems. I set it up as not a new watch but from my "restore from backup" of my Series 0.

Everything seemed fine all day, then we went out to dinner and suddenly I didn't have a connection - got the dreaded red "not connected to your phone" icon. Rebooted both phone and watch, no go. Tried to "find my watch", nothing beeps.

I get home and thus connect to wifi, and the watch connects again just fine and is talking to the phone.

Anyone else experience this? I'm not sure how to troubleshoot. I've unpaired and repaired, and it's all fine until I get off wifi. So, now I'm doing a full hard reset, and going to set it up as a new watch. Is the bluetooth potentially broken on my new watch so only wifi works?

 

[Mabus51]

Mine connected to cellular without issue when I left my phone at home. Check to make sure it activated with your carrier.

 

[tekchic]

It's not a cellular model. I have LTE with AT&T on my phone. Watch is old school bluetooth/wifi.

 

[Mabus51]

On the Watch, swipe up from the bottom. Press the radio icon and check to make sure Bluetooth is on.

 

[matrix07]

On the watch, swipe up for control center. At upper left hand side do you see green iPhone icon or blue WiFi one?

 

[nippyjun]

I thought the wifi only model will only connect to wifi networks known to your iPhone.

 

[tekchic]

Bluetooth and wifi icons were both on (when I was off my home network). Toggled both on phone and watch before rebooting both. It kept showing the red "disconnected from iPhone" while I was off home wifi.

Ended up with nuclear option - completely unpaired, wiped the watch, set it up totally as new. It now appears to work when I'm not on wifi (tested by toggling both wifi icons off for watch/phone and passed some data back and forth over LTE on iPhone).

It must not have liked going from a Series 0 and "restoring from backup" up to a Series 4.

@nippyjun - correct, wifi only connects to wifi networks known to my iPhone -- but I was on my home network all day when it was working fine. When I'm not on any wifi, it *should* have been connecting to my iPhone via its usual bluetooth connection and using the iPhone's LTE for data, but it refused to stay connected to my iPhone when I was away from my home wifi network. Super quirky.

Seems to be fine now, but I guess I ticked it off trying to restore from a Series 0 on WatchOS 4 --> Series 4 on WatchOS5.