No nightstand mode since watchOS 4 upgrade

As a follow up for others with this problem, here is what happened to me. I received my Series 3 watch yesterday. I unpaired my Series 2 from my iPhone, which also automatically backs it up to the iPhone. (Be sure you are using an encrypted backup or you could lose your saved Health App data. All iOS 11 iCloud backups are encrypted, but you must explicitly choose the setting to encrypt if backing up in iTunes.) I then paired my Series 3 to the iPhone and restored the backup from the misbehaving Series 2. I then paired the now-reset Series 2 watch to my wife's iPhone. Basically, both phones were started from factory settings. The Series 3 was restored from a backup and the Series 2 was set up from scratch. Both watches now display nightstand mode. That's the good news.

However, neither one will enter nightstand mode at the 45 degree angle of my charging stand. I must tip the Watches beyond that slope and then they will remain as I let them move back to 45 degrees. Given what others have said, and this experience, I think that Apple must have tweaked the angle at which the Watch enters nightstand mode, breaking a bunch of nightstands at the same time.

If you Watch won’t enter nightstand mode at all, then a backup, reset and restore is worth trying. If your Watch needs a higher angle than your charging stand to enter nightstand mode, then you'll just have to tip it farther manually for now. Perhaps Apple will tweak it back the way it was in a future release, if lots of us write Apple Suggestions asking for it.

Yes, I think Timothy is exactly right. As others have replied in this thread, it is clear that only some people have the problem, and that it manifests itself differently for different people. Mine, for example, absolutely does not go into nightstand mode at any angle. I have tried this over and over. I have a new Series 3 arriving in a few days and my wife is taking this Series 2. My hope is that with a complete reset, it will start to behave again. There are other issues it has had since the upgrade to watchOS 4 that I am also hoping a reset will solve.

I really do appreciate the attempt to help, but the problem isn’t that I don’t know how to do it. I have been using the nightstand mode successfully for a year and I know how to position the Watch to invoke it. The problem is that watchOS 4 broke nightstand mode and it no longer works when I place my watch vertically on its side with the buttons facing upwards. This is not a user error, but a bug in watchOS 4. I assume it is only happening to some of us ormthere would be more of a fuss about it. I was hoping, by posting here, that someone would have found a solution to getting it working again. I have tried tilting it farther forward as Brianwj007 suggested (all the way to 90 degrees), and I was thinking of resetting the Watch completely until Kevinti28 said that didn't work for him (I may still try that), so if anyone has had this problem and solved it, please share with us here.