Bluetooth/Wifi + iOS 15.1 Watch Pairing Issues

After iOS 15.1 my iPhone XS asked me to pair my watch again. WatchOS8 had trouble installing but my watch was still syncing with XS. I unpaired my series 3. Attempted pairing and now… Not pairing at all.

I have read 10 articles, watched 3 or 4 videos, restarted the phone multiple times, trying anything — even reset XS & restored from iCloud. The code won’t even show up to try to pair the two. Using the visual pairing and camera just results in the pairing timing out.

I have an old 6s on an older iOS so I attempted pairing there. It worked! Until it refused to pair because of the outdated iOS. I updated to 15.1, fingers crossed it was my XS and not the iOS. I confirmed Bluetooth and Wifi are on. Attempted again.

The 6s still had more success, and on pairing manually prompting the watch the show a pairing code. Typed the code in and the 6s attempts to pair with the watch. It looks so close to working until it fails after 60-90 seconds and prompts me to turn on Bluetooth and Wifi. After multiple restarts to the phone I’ve determined that pairing on a 6s updated to 15.1 resulted in Bluetooth and Wifi turning off and aborts the pairing attempt.

I even went out and bought a series 7 to determine if this was a series 3 hardware issue. It had the same pathetic results as above.

I only hope this helps someone out there experiencing the same thing. I’d love Apple to get back to me and tell me how to fix this.

Because of the pairing issue, I lost a 1765 day move streak. It’s stupid to be sad about it but it adds to the frustration.