Apple Watch 3 wont update, keeps rebooting , cant pair

[goodfidelity]

I have a Apple Watch 3 that worked perfectly with my iPhone 8.

After upgrading to iPhone 11 PRO with iOS 16.1 it needed to update also the WatchOS.

After doing the first update, the watch still didnt want to pair, and needed another update (to 8.7.1).

I have now been trying to update multiple times, leaving the watch and the phone idle all night and turning off the screen lock on the phone.
I tried also to put it on 2.4ghz WiFi, and also i tried turning off bluetooth on the phone to push it into using wifi.

Still no result.

Updates gives either 2 hours, 5 hours or similar. Sometimes it reaches finish, only to keep rebooting the watch.

During the process i can see the watch rebooting multiple times.
During the process i can see the "update paused" message on the phone.

I can see others had same problem. But i cant find a solution.

iOS 16.1 on the phone, and i dont know what on the Watch..

i cant pair the watch without doing the update first. So the watch is now unusable to me. Apple dont allow newer phones to pair with this watch unless updated to 8.7.1.

Please help guys!

 

[someoneoutthere]

Try a soft reset on both of your products and see if the update/pairing goes through. YMMV, but doing so has helped the cause for some of the people I know.

Force restart iPhone

If iPhone isn’t responding, try forcing it to restart.

support.apple.com

Restart Apple Watch

If something isn’t working right, try restarting your Apple Watch and its paired iPhone.

support.apple.com

 

[tranceking26]

Something similar happened to me with my old S3, I was certain it was broken, but after like 3-4 days I decided to give it one last try and it worked. I can't explain how it was fixed, but it's now usable again. Maybe server issues? But not sure that would apply to you here.

 

[Bassman82]

Apple has bricked our watches! Same exact issue and went to the Genius Bar for answers. They sent my watch in and I get an update that there is hardware failure and they want $229 to fix the watch. Knowing the watch worked fine before attempting to update I got really disgruntled and they gave me a “Customer satisfaction” fix and I received the new watch today.

Guess what? Trying to update and bam same problem. The watch keeps rebooting while attempting to update. This is a joke and I hope more people come forward about this. I will never buy another Apple Watch of this is how they roll… If I find a solution I will post back