iOS / watchOS 26 Apple Watch still won't stay on set time zone, when disconnected from iPhone.

When I travel ashore on cruise ships, Usually don't bring my iPhone, after all why have an Apple Watch if you are always going to have your iPhone with you. Often, the Cruise Line wants you to stay on "ship's time", often the Time Zone of the Home Port. It is crucial you know what time it is when ashore to make sure the ship doesn't leave without you. If your iPhone is set to another time zone besides the local time zone, the Apple Watch will only keep that time zone when connected to the iPhone, as soon as you leave your iPhone, your watch will revert to the local time zone. This caused me to almost miss the ship once. I assumed my watch would stay on the timezone that was set. As soon as I got back to my cabin the watch again showed the correct time. With every new version of the watch I test this. I'm hopeful that at some point this gets fixed. When the watch changes by an hour, it doesn't tell you, you can't even see the current time zone setting on the watch.

So, when I am on a cruise ship I make sure to not use my Apple Watch because it is an unreliable why to know the correct time. Some of the salesmen on the ship know of this deficiency, and use this as a sales trick when they see someone walk by with an Apple Watch.

Anyway, I now have another watch I use when I need to keep the watch set on a particular TimeZone.

There are workarounds such as two time zones on the watch, always keeping another time zone on the local time zone, to know when they match something is wrong but, if the iPhone is the only way to set the time zone on the watch, it shouldn't require the iPhones presence to stay on the needed timezone. This behavior is not obvious and is often not noticed until you miss or almost miss the sailing of your ship, or something else disastrous.

This also happens near Time Zone borders. It also happens if someone needs to stay on a particular timezone for work, such as a military officer at the Pentagon needing to stay on UTC. If the battery on your phones dies, your watch won't show the chosen timezone either.

So, always know, setting the timezone manually on the iPhone is not setting the timezone of the watch manually. There is no reason the watch couldn't be updated to stay on the timezone that is set on the iPhone or even have its own setting. Not being able to trust the time on a watch degrades its central purpose as a timepiece.

They say it is designed to always be connected to the iPhone. I would never have wanted an Apple Watch if I always wanted my iPhone with me.

Please only helpful comments. Blaming the poster for the problem they are having is never helpful.