How to backup Apple Watch ... WITHOUT unpairing it from iPhone

Richard Liu wrote:

This Apple support article says, "Unpairing your Apple Watch restores it to its factory settings. " The unpairing is performed in the Watch app on the iPhone. That's why I hesitate to unpair the watch in order to discover whether the iPhone regularly has been making backups of the watch that are hidden in the backups of the iPhone and/or only unpairing causes a backup to be made to iCloud.

Further down the page it also says Before erasing all content and settings on your Apple Watch, your iPhone creates a new backup of your Apple Watch. You can use the backup to restore a new Apple Watch. After your Apple Watch unpairs, you'll see the Start Pairing message.

I looked at my daughter's Apple Watch for you (I don't have one) and nowhere is Apple Watch listed in her iPhone's list of apps contributing to iCloud Backups. You won't see it. Neither did I find an indication in the Watch app regarding backups.

Apple says here that an iPhone backup to iCloud includes data from a paired watch:

When you back up your iPhone to iCloud or your computer, your iPhone backup includes your Apple Watch data. 

Edited… I understand what you saying … my take is the watch is backed up to the iPhone… the iPhone is backed up to the Cloud. If you unpair you don’t loose anything on the watch. It when you have to whip the watch clean and start all over again you can transfer the backup from the phone back to watch. When you remove the watch from the watch app everything is gone. Let’s say your selling the watch. You remove the watch in the watch app. There no reason to keep it unless your getting another watch. You put the previous backup on the new watch. Or you send your watch in for repairs. Apple wants you to whip the watch clean. When you get the watch back you restore the watch from the backup on the iphone. Let me look into it further.

The ipad is different. The ipad backup is in the cloud. You buy a new ipad at the Apple Store. You log into your iCloud account and transfer the back up to the new ipad. I have 3 ipads. All 3 mirror each other. All 3 have the same stuff on them. You can have 3 watches. All 3 can have the same stuff on it. You have a watch for dress and on for sports but you want to have the same stuff on the two. You make only one backup there’s no need to have 2. The watch is dependent on the iphone to work. The ipad isn’t.

Right… lets say your going across country and you leave your phone at home and only take the watch with you. Now, you drop your watch and it’s in pieces but you need a watch. The only watch you can buy now is a TimeX… the only way out of this you buy a new phone too. The ipad back up is in the cloud as a stand alone. Get get on a jet to take you to New York. When you get to New York and you discover you lost your ipad. But you need your ipad. Just buy another one and restore it from the backup in the cloud. You don’t even need a computer to restore the ipad.