Question before selling my Series 3 cellular Apple Watch

[praterkeith]

Today I called Verizon to have my number share disconnected from my Apple Watch and to remove it from my account, and was told that it won’t work on another carrier because it’s locked to Verizon. I was under the impression that all Series 3 cellular Apple Watches were unlocked and could be paired with any carrier. A quick search says I’m right, but has anyone experienced any issues?

 

[Brookzy]

You're correct - all cellular Apple Watches are unlocked for any network. Make sure when unpairing your watch you select to remove the plan so that the next buyer doesn't accidentally reactivate your plan.

[Note if selling that it is best for the buyer to be in the same country as the models of cellular Apple Watch are regional.]

 

[darknyt]

So does that mean the girl at AT&T today that told me the Apple Watch they are selling will only work on AT&T was full of it?

 

[Pbrutto]

I helped my dad after he did a full wipe/restore on the series three I got him to clear up some problems. It broke the cell service (Verizon) and I ultimately fixed it through some perseverance within the Watch app. Verizon has NO CLUE about what to do with the Apple Watch for tech support. They rely on us the consumer to be interested enough in the product Apple made to understand it, so they can take your money for the cell service. Long story short, use the internet. While Apple has good tech support, my experience is they try to say that the cell company needs to figure it out. Ultimately the problem was the way Verizon’s webpage loaded in the Apple Watch app. Imagine the fun of trying to get one of them to take the blame and fix it in that situation!

More directly related to the origional question, the watch uses an e sim (something the carriers are fighting against) and consequently it works with any provider that supports the Watch. Like another commenter said, same country is important.

 

[44267547]

Today I called Verizon to have my number share disconnected from my Apple Watch and to remove it from my account, and was told that it won’t work on another carrier because it’s locked to Verizon. I was under the impression that all Series 3 cellular Apple Watches were unlocked and could be paired with any carrier. A quick search says I’m right, but has anyone experienced any issues?

Verizon representatives are ill-trained and uninformed most of the time when it comes to third-party products like the Apple Watch. I would follow others advice if applicable, also make sure your Apple Watch is removed from your iCloud account when preparing to erasing all content and settings.

 

[dave006]

So does that mean the girl at AT&T today that told me the Apple Watch they are selling will only work on AT&T was full of it?

Well maybe not full of it but she was ill informed about the Apple Watch & LTE. See the note below for details on why some reps are still confused and think the watch is carrier specific. It is an issue with many reps regardless of the carrier. Hey even most Apple employees don't have a good understanding of how the Apple Watch cellular function works.

Apple Watch Series 3 (GPS + Cellular) comes in only three regional models and all models are carrier unlocked: Americas, China, and Europe/Asia Pacific. Unlike iPhone, there isn't a worldwide Apple Watch Series 3 model that supports all cellular bands used globally.

Note: There were issues last fall during launch. Some carriers did not properly have their back-end systems setup for the Apple Watch. By default, some carriers could only activate LTE on watches the were scanned into their LTE device whitelist(s). Initially T-Mobile and Verizon could only activate watch's that were sold via the carrier and not watches that were purchased directly from Apple or from another carrier like AT&T.

There was / is an easy workaround to just enter the correct device information from the bottom of the watch's box or available in the Watch app on the paired iPhone into the carrier's back-end system before attempting to activate the LTE plan.

Dave

 

[Pbrutto]

Like I said above....it just came out today that the Justice Department is investigating carriers for blocking esims.....hahahahaha

 

[Brookzy]

Like I said above....it just came out today that the Justice Department is investigating carriers for blocking esims.....hahahahaha

Called it! (Though for those concerned with the relevance to Apple Watches - the DOJ case relates to eSIMs in iPads. Apple Watches don't lock to networks.)