WatchOS 6.0.1 Locks While On Wrist

I upgraded my Series 3 to 6.1 this morning and have pretty much gone through a full day as of now without a single lock-out while on my wrist. I would have had around 10 occurrences of the lock-out issue by now on 6.0.1.

Based on today's results, it does appear the issue has been resolved on the Series 3 after downloading 6.1.

Thanks, JCC. Following your lead I upgraded my S3 overnight last night.

After about 8 hours of usage today I have had zero locking instances (on 6.0.1 I averaged 1 every hour or two).

Fingers still crossed, but so far WatchOS 6.1 has been excellent. Battery life seems good too.

I've been watching this issue closely and it looks like it's a widespread and persistent problem with S3 watches running watchos 6.0.1. I've kept my replacement watch running on 5.3 and it's been flawless (as was my S2 watch and my S0 watch) before.

It's clearly not a problem on S4 and S5 watches and WatchOS 6 won't even run on the older watches yet. So it seems like a hardware incompatibility with the S3 watch. Apple must be finding it hard to fix the problem, because it's been a month now.

I can confirm this exact problem with Series 3 and WatchOS 6.0.1.

I am also almost certain that the problem has nothing to do with the actual sensor on the watch. On mine I could reproduce the problem by launching various apps on the watch. Eventually one of those apps would hard crash, and the crash would result in Watch being locked. Often the weather app would crash in this way, and every time it would lock. The now playing app would function similarly.

I thought it was a hardware problem and returned the watch (which was brand new). The replacement is still on WatchOS 5.3 and is working perfectly, but I'm afraid to upgrade as it seems very likely this problem will come back. In my case I would sometimes go hours without the problem, but then I would have it happen multiple times in a brief span of time (e.g. crashing to lock screen every 5 minutes).

Yes, I've noticed this as well, and we're not alone:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/daucld/anyone_elses_watch_keep_locking_after_update/

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250673161

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-3-locks-throughout-the-day-randomly.2201726/#post-27804947

This is a constant and extremely annoying problem for me too on my Series 3 cellular capable watch since upgrading to 6.0.1. This problem really makes the watch unreliable, especially if you're using the watch's onboard timer. Almost burned up my steaks last night because the watch kept locking itself while on my wrist. The timer alert won't sound if the watch is locked after the timer is started.

I'm using the same watch band, nothing has changed about my wrist, the band has not been loosened or tightened (it's a stainless band that adjusts only when taking out links in the band, which I haven't done), and the hardware is functioning fine, otherwise. The only change is the upgrade to 6.0.1.

There are a myriad of other bugs in 6.0.1 that really negatively impact the user experience with this OS version (watch is often slow to respond taking a few taps to get the screen to illuminate, Siri performance and accuracy has been noticeably compromised, the reminders app on the watch has been turned into a syncing nightmare, including Siri saying she wan't able to create the reminder and she actually does, to name a few biggies).

Eagerly looking forward to a substantial update. If you haven't updated to Watch OS 6 yet, better wait for the next update of it. Unfortunately, most of the other upgrades that are a part of 6.0.1 start to lose their luster very quickly with the core, backbone functioning of the watch being so negatively impacted, as is the current case with 6.0.1.

It's also happening to me on my S4 GPS+Cellular. So it's not only a S3 issue.

Has anyone upgraded to WatchOS 6.1 and able to confirm or deny whether this fixes the locking problem?