Pairing series 3 Apple Watch with iPhone 15

There is some confusion here.

A newer iPhone iOS can pair to an older Watch OS, but not the other way round.

Make sure the Watch is completely erased (https://icloud.com/find)

Then pair as New Watch, not with backup.

watchOS 10 is required to pair with an iPhone 15 that comes with iOS 17. A series 3 watch is incapable of updating to watchOS 10. So, you cannot pair a series 3 watch with iPhone 15.

So, i bought the new iphone 15 pro max today, unpaired the watch 3 from my old phone (XR), set the new phone up to copy the old phone, and it asked me by itself to be paired with the watch. Which worked like a charm, as LD150 said. Happy end for me and good to know, if someone has a similar problem. Thanks again.

I was just in the store, hands on with a 15 pro max, when the store stuff told me this sad news, which the general support confirmed. It is not a general problem of ios 17, because i actually use an iphone XR with ios 17 and a watch 3, which was paired with an earlier ios version, but works flawlessly under ios 17. So it has to be the process of newly pairing, not a technical issue when paired. Now my watch 3 is 6 years old, but battery health is 97%! It feels bad to be forced to throw that away, and i decided to hold on to my actual configuration and think again what i am going to do. It was a users experience, too, i give you that.

Watches have always paired with same or newer iOS so if anything changed it is in iOS17

There were problems with iOS16.0 but it was fixed in 16.1.4 as I remember it.

I know people with iOS17 and OS9

I don’t know what courage you need if the Series 3 is not paired currently.

Unpair and erase your Apple Watch – Apple Support

I didn’t have the same experience as Polybotes. I unpaired the watch from my iPhone 8 with some degree of success, it still said I should reset and erase the watch. After resetting and erasing, it updated watch iOS, and paired with my iPhone 15. Calls, some notifications, and settings aren’t working. Might try erasing and repairing again.

Ok guys, the problem maybe related to your Bluetooth connection. Just perform network reset on your iPhone.

Please go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset [Device] > Reset > Reset Network Settings. This also resets Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN and APN settings that you've used before.

i have Apple Watch 3 and latest 15 pro with 17.2 ios.

All works like charm now!

What is being done about this?

Update to my question. Using the suggestion from a few other replies of erasing, and resetting the watch, & unpairing it from the previous phone. I have been able to pair it with the new I 15. Thus far notifications and other apps are working have not tried to call yet, thank you for those that responded with some options. It was helpful.

Thanks to all who gave me confidence that I would manage to pair my Apple Watch 3 with my new iPhone 15 Pro Max. I tried first to unpair it from the old iPhone X but it said the unpairing didn't work. I couldn't erase it either using the iPhone X so I erased it using the other method, directly on the watch, necessary when you don't have the iPhone anymore.

I then paired it with the new iPhone. It took a while but it worked.

Good to know nothing changed, thanks for the confirmation.

You can pair an old watch OS with a newer iPhone iOS but not the other way round.

Do not restore any backup and ensure the Watch is totally wiped.

Series 2 are officially vintage/obsolete.

Would it be retrofitting? General Support and the Apple specialist both told me, that it does not work because IOS 17 checks the watchOS-Version before pairing and expects at least 10 for updates, they did not mention any hardware issues. Which makes kind of sense, pairing is a matter of software-protocols and bluetooth on the hardware side. Watch 3 has bluetooth 4.2, iphone 15 has bluetooth 5.3, 5.3 is at least on paper backwards compatible to bluetooth 4.2.

But perhaps i miss somethig here, i would like to believe that it is an offer to the future. Greetings!

Thank You very much for this input. It is technically plausible as far as i can have an opinion here, and would be good news, but for the record, i was told otherwise from Stuff in the Apple shop, a specialist via chat and a general support woman on phone. Now, if i find the courage, i may give it a test in the next few days. If so, i will post the results.

Thanks for this. Which WatchOS were you running and which one did you get after resetting? I have a Series 3 running OS 7.4.1 and plan to update my iPhone 11 Pro to 15 Pro. I wouldn't want to buy a new watch. Thanks.