installing watchOS 7.1

Same here, lost count of how many tries I have made. My thought was to set it up as a new watch also but it always get recognized as my watch. I don't think it is worth it to remove from my devices as though it has been sold to a new user. I have a feeling that will be a snowball that will be more trouble than it is worth.

I had a problem similar to this. I have an iPhone 11 and a Series 6 watch (the phone was bought in June and the watch a few days after it’s release). The iOS must be 14.2 before downloading OS 7.1. Make sure they’re synced and connected to to WiFi. Also, the watch must be charging with at least 50% battery available (I also had my phone charging to be safe). I called Apple and spoke with someone right away (didn’t have to wait which was unusual). They had me restart both the watch and phone. I was able to download and install. OS 7.1 took less than 5 minutes to download. Just make sure you have enough space on your watch as well. Hope this helps anyone.

I set my Watch 2 weeks before factory base, since it is not working together with my mac since watchos7 for unlocking.

On the other hand this problem killed Mac (Catalina) on unlocking side, it fKing slow.

Now I spent hours to wait and pushing forward (restarting the process, keep the phone active, don't let to sleep, etc.). Many time complete failure. Not to mention the progress indicator: 1 hour, 2 hour, 5 hours, 8 hours, 58 minutes, 2 hours, 38 minutes in a row spending 10 minutes?

Phone upgraded to 14.2, again waste of 1-1,5 hour to wait the crazy slow process.

More and more hate points to Apple continuously in the past year after 16 years of living together...

What they are doing there? Investing a lots of time to draw emojis and break the processes?

I had exactly the same issue, no matter how many times I tried it would always fail. My fix for this was to unpair my watch from my iPhone then re-pair it with another iphone, my wife's, perform the update from her phone, which worked first time !, then re-pair it back to my phone again. A hassle no doubt but it did work first time, this was after spending 2 hours on remote support calls with Apple Technicians it was their suggestion.

Ok so I have been dealing with this for a week. I have an iPhone XI and series 3 and after several boards and things to try that people recommended to fix this issue as I too was connected to the internet...all I had to do was Uninstall the Watch App and reinstall. It did take over 3 hours to verify, prepare and install watch software update but it finally worked. The only issue I had was during the install phase the actual watch was ready to pair the watch app said installing still...I selected the cancel option and followed the prompts which unstuck that screen on the watch app (only do this if your actual watch says start pairing ). This was absolutely insane. Side note I had apple call me this afternoon only to get an appointment to the store, so calling them is no help for this issue. I just thought I would give unistalling the app a try and so glad it worked. This week of frustration made me consider a Droid for my next purchase, lol.

There was a reported success with using this method essentially on November 15th. Question to those that have been successful if they are still visiting here, was it worth it ? Any worthwhile features or improvements other than for those living in Russia and South Korea ?

Yes, good point but other devices update even if an update is skipped I believe. I may be wrong and the watch seems to be a weird duck because it relies on phone. At some point I may try the most working solution of pairing to my wife’s phone but perhaps, maybe, and so on Apple will recognize the problem.........

I had a similar problem with my s3 gps watch not unlocking my 2015 MacBook. I tried all sorts of fixes, from what I found people had written on websites. I gave up eventually. A couple of hours later, I went back to the MacBook, opened it up and up popped a message asking if I wanted to use the watch to unlock it....it seems either I’d accidentally sorted it, or that (more likely) I just had to wait for the two gadgets to work as intended...

Tried the process of installing by unpairing, removing from my Apple ID, reset, set up as new using my wife’s phone. No luck. Re-attached to my account, set up as new, no luck updating but interestingly at one point it showed as being up to date with 7.02, but now automatic updates has decided it is not up to date and is once again trying to get 7.1. End of the line for me, only a month old so will check for service options with Apple.

Contacted Apple support after trying the last resort of pairing to wife’s phone with no success. Spent best part of an hour with very pleasant agent who didn’t waste my time going through their script to try what we have all tried already. He shadowed my screen while trying again three more times and grabbed screenshots of the failures primarily to add to Apple’s database of this issue. He informed me that the fix is in process and will come by way of a phone update. No time projection naturally.

FYI of those still wasting time on this.

I have tried to update my AW3 stainless w cell on multiple networks, with my iPhone 6s and 12 mini all on latest OS and set up watch as new and remotely wiped watch using icloud and restored and updated on watch alone and set up as new and everything you can try for weeks now. My AW3 has the annoying restart randomly bug, which seems to happen when you join or lose a wireless network.

Always “not connected to internet” near end of preparing. So irritating.

If in fact it will take an update to iOS 14.3 on the phone that version is now available as a public beta. If you have time to enrol and load to your 6s it may be worth a try. Thinking positively and taking my chat with Apple support at face value, wherein they stated that it will take an update of the paired iPhone to get the watch update it may be worth the time given that the restart bug is a real nuisance. In my case the watch still functions normally so the only irritation is the fact that updates are not working as they should which is very sad for an Apple product.

I have installed iOS beta14.3 on my phone and the watch update still does not work ( at present 14.3 is at public beta 2 ). Support continues to tell me that engineering is working on a fix so as 14.3 goes through incremental betas I will continue to try to update watch.

Ok, so I am glad it's not just me. iPhone 11 running 14.2 and have not been able to update Apple Watch 3 (MQL12LL/A) past 7.0.1. I have tried resetting Watch several times, turning off WIFI and Bluetooth on the phone, turning off any connections between watch and phone and it either says needs WIFI to continue, or not enough space. I worked at VZW in Retail for 11 years so I know my way around these devices. This is the first time I have had any issues with updating Software on any iOS devices. Hopefully a fix comes to the phone soon.

Confirmed. Tried over 50 times various ways to get to 7.1. Kept failing for “not connected.” Had the random restart problem. Beta 14.3 and beta 7.2 updated fine but did take a very long time for the watch. Confirmed on my 6S. Then I unpaired my watch and paired to my 12 mini, which works fine. AW3 still on watchOS 7.2. Thank you so much.