Posting this before I cave and try to take the watch to the genius bar. It's a Series 3 42mm GPS + Cellular, trying to pair to an iPhone X on ios 16.0.2 It hasn't been used in about a year or more, I unpaired it and reset it from the previous iPhone it was on, and disconnected it from my iCloud completely as I saw some people had issues with FindMy app and iCloud still being connected. I even switched off my 5ghz and only ran 2.4g because I read the series 3 doesn't work with 5ghz wifi. I've done the resets, and hard resets. Erase all content option, if it's been listed online, I've probably attempted the troubleshoot. It allows me to go through the entire setup process, and then it gives me an estimated time for download. Each time I open the app, the update page refreshes, sometimes telling me I have 3 days, sometimes saying I have 2 hours, and other times, just telling me my OS is "up to date with the most current version: 6.3" Because I now have it unpaired and completely disconnected from any iPhone, I can no longer access the settings directly on the watch, which I'm assuming, had I done the unpairing and reset correctly, nothing should be on it anyways so I don't believe it to be a storage issue. I'm just at a total loss, I've been trying to update this watch for 4 days now, and repair costs more than the watch is worth. Support only ran me through every option I'd already done.
WatchOS 8.7.1 Software Update
Hi there,
You might have better luck asking this question over in Apple Support Communities run by Apple Support.
Curious if you ever found the fix to this. I'm running into the exact same issue with a watch that I haven't used in over a year.
Hey did you ever find a solution to this or post it on the discussion forum because I’m having the same issue at the moment trying to connect the series 3 with my iPhone 12.