Watch needs to update before completing pairing but disconnects

I recently got a pretty much unused Apple Watch Series 1 (A1554). I'm on an iPhone XR with the latest iOS (13.1.2).

So I reset the watch , selected language and started to pair.

Once I hit pair on the Watch, my iPhone instantly give me the popup for starting pairing. I go through the process of matching my watch with the camera.
Watch App says the watchOS needs to be updated to the latest version and I click update
The update button is greyed out
After 20 seconds or so I get a message that It failed to connect and I have to try again or disconnect. Here I get into an endless loop of trying again.

In similar posts here it often gets linked to https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205025, this article's suggestions doesn't help.

I've tried:

Resetting network settings on my iPhone
Turning both devices on and off again
Force restarting devices

After googling for a couple of hours and trying everything I'm at a loss of what to do. Any suggestions?

Apple Watch

Posted on Oct 5, 2019 1:21 PM

Top-ranking reply

Kjell-Roger Author

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Oct 6, 2019 12:57 AM

Update: I got it working!

I'm not exactly sure what the issue was, but it seems likely there was something on my iPhone XR.

I borrowed an iPhone 8 running iOS 13.0 and started the pairing process with that. That phone managed to download and install the watchOS update. After that was done I started the pairing process with my iPhone XR and it worked.

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Watch needs to update before completing pairing but disconnects

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