WatchOS7 update problems

Here's another update to my Series 3 OS7 issues & troubleshooting. I'm having the frequent reset issues like others on here, using an xR and a Series 3 Nike Edition on OS7.

• Did a phone-free reset (set watch on charger, hold side button until power options appear, hold crown until "factory reset" options appear), and after resetting I set the watch up as new device. It loaded with OS7 and then had to update to 7.0.1 again. After doing this, I was able to go 24 hours+ without the apple logo appearing.
• Changed the watch face from the default, which for some reason was the last Activity face, the one that's predominantly text-based, to a simpler Numerals face with no additional complications added to it. That has seemingly increased stability as well.

By clearing out anything hung up in the watch (phone-free reset with new device setup) and by removing any additional stressors on the hardware (no complications, simple display) I've increased device stability. The more I play with it and observe responses, I think the Series 3 is running into hardware limitations that Apple doesn't want to disclose/didn't properly account for. I say that based on the following observations:

• These aren't full-on hard resets. The numeric passcode is never required. It's almost as if the watch is resetting a smaller component and throws the apple logo up while it does it. Maybe it's just clearing the cache repeatedly?
• My xR is on iOS 14 and—simultaneous to the numerous watchOS7 issues—I noticed my phone was having bluetooth issues. It would show a connection to other devices, but it would not allow any interaction. So, it would show a connection to my earbuds but audio would play through the phone speaker. It showed a connection to my Echo Auto, but audio would come through the phone speaker only and the Echo Auto could not detect the phone. Had to unpair/disconnect everything and reconnect to restore. I wonder if the watch doesn't offload/dump some memory overflow/processing tasks to the phone when busy, and is having difficulty syncing to the phone via bluetooth, and that's causing the apple logos?
• I have hit the side button several times to find the same group of apps (Messaging, Music, Activity) running in the background, even though I've never activated them. If it's pulling default apps to run in the background, that could be unnecessarily tasking the watch and causing memory issues.

I'm not so sure that what we're experiencing isn't due to syncing issues and/or hardware limitations & memory issues that Apple doesn't want to admit to.

This seems to be an IOS 14 and WatchOS 7 combo issue, and not solely a WatchOS 7 issue. The good news is that if you are willing to restore both your Phone and Watch there is a good chance the issues will go away. The bad news is that you will need to reset both your phone and watch.

1. Start by creating fresh backups of both devices
2. Unpair the Watch (once it unpairs and starts up fresh, turn it off)
3. Restore your phone
4. Either restore from a backup or set the phone up as new (the choice is yours)
5. Turn the watch on
6. Pair the watch to your phone (I chose to restore as new, but you can always live dangerously and restore from backup)
7. I chose to simplify my life and stick with the default watch face for now (just in case the new complications are causing some of the issues). Time, weather, calendar, fitness, and battery percentage are good enough for me until Apple gets this sorted out.
8. I also chose to limit the apps installed on my watch to the critical ones I really need and use (MFA, wallet, Spotify, etc.).
9. It has been 3 days since I implemented this solution, and so far, not magical reboots. My battery life even appears to have stabilized.

Good luck, I hope this helps someone else.

I unpaired watch, wiped it. Wiped my phone (11 pro max) restored phone from back up, re paired watch and restored from back up. Its been 3 days on 7.0.1with no reboot issues amd excellent battery life. I have not attempted the update to 7.0.2

This issue doesn't get fixed itself with Watch OS 7.0.2. You probably want to disable the sync of "Recent Music" for Music in Watch app.

I reseted my watch for quite a few times, then my Series 5 Cellular Watch worked okay for a few days on 7.0.1, This afternoon it started rebooting like crazy, I didn't notice it until it feels hot on my wrist and when I looked at the watch, it already ran out of juice.

I charged it and upgrade it to Watch OS 7.0.2, it still reboots every time the clock face shows up. To prevent the "Home Wi-Fi" issue mentioned above, I took a walk to a place where my home Wi-Fi has no coverage, it still reboots like crazy.

Then I started randomly checking watch settings in the Watch app on my phone, noticed the Music is set to sync "Recent Music" and two play list I had selected. I don't have Apple Music, the synced tracks are some old music I have on my phone. After I disabled the "Recent Music" toggle, my watch stopped rebooting. Seems like some bug happened for Non-Apple Music subscribers?

I've not had issues in a week or so. What I did was update to 7.0.1, reset to like new, removed all but one watch face, and restricted myself to only essential apps. Of note, I removed the Music app since I don't use Apple Music on my phone. I'd seen earlier in the thread somebody say the Music app was trying to sync old playlists and another person said it used > 8 GB of space. Suspecting its that app that might be an issue for many.

I have a Nike Series 5 Apple Watch and the battery died after 8 hours of use after the WatchOS 7 update. It had never died before even using it 24 hrs + in the past. I unpaired the device and rebooted my phone then re-paired and the battery issue seems better now. Still would not make it 24 hrs but at least getting through the work day. What I have noticed is my steps in my activity app are way off. Usually my morning walk gets me 3000+ steps (1.5 miles) but the past two days the watch has registered only slightly more than 300 steps on my walk. I usually had 15000 steps a day and for the past two days haven't had any where near that much although I am still walking the same amount. Not sure how the update hosed my activity app but it appears it did. Wishing there was a way to roll back the OS update. Apple QA really messed up on this one. Hopefully a fix for the update will roll out soon.

I’m writing for the third time

now, this is how my story went:

-iOS 14 and watch is 7.0 update-> watch started to reset itself spontaneously several times a day and doesn’t show GPS routes in training

-did a full reset of the watch (not iPhone) and set it up as new- this fixed random reboots and GPS, but there’s a battery drain. It use to hold for two days without walkie talkie enabled, now day and a half (reading this thread this actually seems to be great after this silly update)

-watch OS 7.0.1 came and I was

naive enough to install it- my watch started to reset itself again

-did another “start from the scratch”- set up watch as new AGAIN and it seems to have fixed the reboot issue- it lasted a whole charge without rebooting

I don’t have CarPlay but I do have a Bluetooth enabled FM transmitter. Once it did reboot as soon as I got in the car and for last couple of days I switched that thing off. So it actually could be something related to Bluetooth. I’ll se how it goes tomorrow and let you know. Sad to see I have to charge it every night now (it used to be only every second night). But reading this thread I guess I should consider myself lucky that it’s holding at least a day and without reboots. That’s not how I imagined using my Apple Watch. There is no Genius Bar nor Apple stores in my country. I want to go back to previous watchOS!

greetings from Europe

I originally posted on the form regarding my Apple Series 4 watch Losing all biometric reading ability, heart rate, EKG, Health meters, etc not working after upgrading to WatchOS 7.

Update: I spoke with Apple and they suggested unpairing and then pairing the watch again. I did this, but in the set up process, I set the watch up as a new Watch. In addition I noted another community member mentioning reducing the number of available watch faces to two helped. I took that measure as well. So far the watch is now functioning normally.

I do not think this affected the battery drain issue I am still running to charge it more than once a day but at least the functionality has returned I hope this is helpful.

Like others, I have been having a multitude of issues with Apple Watch series 3 since updating to watchOS 7/7.0.1. The primary issue has been the watch shutting down numerous times per day and displaying the low battery icon. When putting the watch on the charger it powers on at >90% battery life.

The secondary issue(s) have all been tied to fitness, heart, and health data not working. Compared to a watch that can’t stay on for normal periods of time these issues are not the primary concern.

After running a complete restore of the iPhone and Watch as outlined in the KBase article, nothing has improved.

I had a tech support session with a representative via Messages. They ran a remote diagnostic which did not detect any battery or hardware defects. They encouraged mailing the watch in or visiting the Genius Bar, however neither option will be able to fix a software issue outside of doing an erase / restore which has already been done multiple times.

At this point my only options are 1) bring the watch to an Apple Store for further evaluation, or 2) wait for the next watchOS update and hope it fixes the issue.

I’ve been an Apple Watch user since it was first released. Due to this issue my watch is completely unusable and sitting on my desk until it can go 8+ hours without crashing. Over the past 5 years this is the longest period of time that an Apple Watch has not been on my wrist. My disappointment with watchOS 7 product quality is only eclipsed by my anticipation of the next watchOS update.

Tried something out of frustration yesterday. Reset Series 3 to factory new conditions and set up as a new watch. This time, I only put one face on the watch and limited # of app installs. After I've done that performance has been better for me without any restarts in the past 24 hours. There's still glitches but its much improved.

Has anyone tried to just turn off WiFi on the watch? I have too have having the reboots and notice the patterns related to WiFi, although my observation is when coming into range of a open WiFi area such as a store is when it occurs, not the leaving of connected WiFi areas. I have reboots occur when traveling country roads that don’t have anything resembling WiFi. My understanding is the Apple Watch 3 should be functional without WiFi and just use Bluetooth. The only thing that will not work is WatchOS updates with this setup. To turn off WiFi look on the watch in settings under WiFi. An interesting benefit is things appear to load faster over Bluetooth (emails, news apps, etc.). Since I have tried 7.0.1, 7.0.2, wipeout my watch and then pair my watch without any impact on the rebooting, I figured I will give this a try.

I have reset the watch to factory settings and unpaired to pair it again. Now it works even after the 7.0.2 update

The patch is now available in 7.0.3

watchOS 7.0.3 just released exclusively for Apple Watch Series 3 to fix these issues. Installing right now, hopefully it will solve reboot issue

Hey,

The same thing happened to me. If your watch is still paired can you go to the Watch app > General > Diagnostics Logs and try and find one which says ‘Panic’ if you find one can you send a screenshot of the log, not the whole log just the start of it. I need to see if I have the same logs as you. If so then we need to see if this is a distributed issue. And then we can take action from there. I’ve been having this issue since 7th July when I was on the beta, since then I’ve gone back to watchOS 6 and the issue remains. Hope you can help. And my Twitter is @AurtherNadeem if you wanna talk there.

Thanks