Apple Watch with iPhone SE Siri not playing nice!

Exactly the same issue, a similar thread with other customers suffering the same issues is here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250695961?answerId=251766750022&page=1

I've gone through countless re-pairing, restored my iPhone SE as a new iPhone, indoors, outdoors, nothing makes it work reliably. My series 4 watch worked perfectly on its original OS5 but as soon as I updated to OS6 the problem started.

My watch connects by bluetooth to other devices such as an external speaker, why the **** doesn't it work properly with an iPhone SE?

Had the watch around 7 months, nearly 5 months of that it hasn't worked as intended.

Currently on Watch OS 6.1.1 iOS 13.3

Apple sent me a replacement Watch 4 44m to resolve this bug. (Fast, two day turnaround.)

Bad news. 

After spending the day getting the Watch back up and running... and doing it from a raw, fresh setup (because my backups since 1/20 are nowhere to be found)... I can confirm this is a software/config problem and not a hardware problem.

I am still getting many dropped and paused Siri instances, at least 25%, sometimes all - despite being connected to the watch, and in my Wi-Fi with no coverage issues on my iPhone, iPads, or MacBook - and that of my family. (My wife’s watch does not have any issues. She has an Apple Watch 4 with iPhone 8. So this isolates our local network or cellular as an issue.)

As described from day one of three months of a single ticket, this is an incompatibility between the iPhone SE and Apple Watch 4 that was created during the WatchOS 6 and iOS 13 codebase upgrade. 

Nest steps I see are:

• Replace iPhone Watch 4 with Watch 3 or 5 - to test iPhone SE
• Replace iPhone SE with iPhone 8 - to test Watch
• Work with Apple Engineering to test signal throughput of:
  • Watch 4 > iPhone SE
  • iPhone SE > Watch 4
  • Watch 4 > iPhone 8
  • IPhone 8 > Watch 4

I’m not happy about the sheer amount of time I’ve spent on this, both as a user and as a significant stockholder. I’ve been pushing QA on this bug for nearly 6 months. I updated the Apple Support facing this problem as well.

I have the same issue with my SE. Got the Apple Watch 5 as a Christmas present and Siri has been a miserable experience so far. Very slow responses, constant "I am working on it", "uh oh lost connection", "can't take that request right now" etc etc. Even restoring both iPhone and Watch didn't change that. Wifi/Bluetooth is not an issue and Siri works very well on my SE.

Just got a series 5. SE phone. The connection to the internet is unusable when connected to my phone. Watch works great when connected directly to Wifi. Thinkings of returning the watch as it's basically unusable outside the house.

Count me in too, Brand new 40mm series 5 for Xmas and the BT connection is abysmal. Plagued with constant lags and "oh oh, lost the connection..". To add insult to injury and wondering if you guys notice this too: the watch will not switch over to Wifi if BT is unusable. I have to force it to switch to wifi either from the Control Center or wifi settings.

Well I'm not familiar with your wife's settings; I'll leave that up to you :D

I goto Settings --> Wifi : often it is not latched onto the network thus tapping the network to force it to join.

I would have thought the watch is smart enough that if BT signal is weak it'd automatically join the wifi network. Not so.

I 100% echo the comments of the original poster.

I just worked with Apple to Backup, Unpair and Repair my Apple Watch 4 44mm to my iPhone SE and Siri is now functioning much better. A slight delay on 1/10 requests versus barely fulfilling any. I am in the latest software for both phone and watch at the time of this writing. I know updates to the pairing/connectivity were deployed in iOS 13.1. I had last tried this troubleshooting process in 13.0.x.

Agreed. For the first 5 minutes after updating to 6.1.2 it seemed that it was corrected. nope.

It blows my mind: the SE is right next to me and asking Siri the temperature outside takes approximately 30 seconds and balks with "Oh oh, lost connection.." after starting to answer.

I have had three support calls with Apple about this. I agree with the vast majority of descriptions here on the failure, and am having the same experience. I would not wait longer for an update.

It was fist discussed with a traditional support rep. We tried pairing/unpairing to no avail.

It was escalated in the next call, 4 days later, to complete the latest update that came out Sunday night. This did not resolve the issue, as several others had commented.

We currently have a support ticket open with two senior support reps, and the Engineering team is reviewing. They expect to get back to me by end of day Saturday. I will report back positive or negative results.

The senior support rep did mention they do not really review these forums, so if you have a problem, you need to call Apple Support. Also, the ‘Apple Support’ app on the App Store is a fantastic way to quickly get someone on the phone, and keep track of your support tickets.

Hello, sadly, I am in the same boat to.

I have had the iPhone SE since a few years and I have had 3 Apple Watches paired with it.

Series 2, 3 and now 4. I have also had the original Apple Watch since the early release, paired with my old iPhone 5S.

They all worked perfectly as did my recently purchased Watch 4.

Up until the recent upgrade.

Since the WatchOS upgrade to 6 I have lost the ability to use Siri (well, it works but real bad) and I have also lost the convenience of making and receiving calls on the Watch as most of the times I get the “connection lost“ error message.

As pointed out by the others, turning off the iPhone or it’s Bluetooth service restores functionality as normal.

I just came across this thread that brought me here and while I am happy to be in good company, I am disappointed by the apparent lack of response by Apple in fixing what appears to be a well known bug.

Annoying to say the least.

/P

UPDATE of February 11th:

For those of you that might be interested, don’t waste your time on chasing yet another update.

I just updatet my iPhone SE to Public Beta iOS 13.4 to no avail.

The “lost connection“ issue persists.. ;-(

This is still not resolved for me.

I have had a case open since 1/26, formally working this issue with several Senior Reps. And no one has been able to resolve it, and I have lost communication by email from the Rep who was helping me to resolve it.

I have escalated this to Apple Support again. Please reference this thread when you discuss with Apple.

I gave up on this and bit the bullet and decided to buy a new iPhone a bit earlier than I would have. This was after many lengthy calls with Support over many hours, sharing of logs, re-pairing, escalations to engineers, everything.

I believe Apple doesn't know how to fix this so that helped my decision.

iPhone 11, watch works perfectly now, its definitely a bug between the watch and the SE....