Series 3 LTE unable to connect to WiFi

[Nugget]

My S3 LTE can connect to my phone via Bluetooth and can fall back to cellular if I'm out of range of the phone, but I can't convince it to use WiFi at all. I tried deleting the WiFi network in my phone and re-adding (while paired with the watch via bluetooth) and I've tried turning wifi off and on on the phone. Nothing seems to work to train the watch about my network.

If I disable bluetooth on my phone, and disable LTE on the watch, the watch just shows "Disconnected". I can't get it to try WiFi at all.

It's frustrating because my house is large enough that I frequently go out of bluetooth range and rely on WiFi to keep the watch paired with the phone during the day. This has always just worked with my Series 0 and Series 2 watches.

 

[steelo3232]

Same thing here although I can’t get LTE to work either, there was another thread started on the WiFi issue, it’s not just you. Frankly, this phone, which I was looking forward too is a damn mess. No WiFi connection without the phone, cant even get LTE set up and going. What a mess

 

[dlbmacfan]

You need to connect your phone to a 2.4 GHz network in order for your watch to join the network. I was having the same problem so I followed these instructions. Problem solved.

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2015/05/how-to-ensure-apple-watch-is-connected-to-a-wi-fi-network.html

 

[Nugget]

I know that. This is the same setup that has been working flawlessly with my previous two apple watches.

Others have started to report the same problem, this is looking more like a bug with the watch.

edit to add: Just for the sake of completeness, I disabled my 5GHz Wifi completely here. Then deleted the network from my phone and did the steps in the linked article. No change. The watch is still unable to connect to wifi if it loses the bluetooth connection with the phone.