I’m about to throw this watch through the window. I read about this specific problem happening to a lot of folks a few years back. Here’s whats going on.

Got a brand new Series 6 Apple Watch today. Went to pair it with my XS (updated to 17.1).

After hours of trying to pair it (it wouldn’t work automatically with the camera nor would the manual pairing work) I finally got them to start pairing after many failed attempts and resets.

Then the watch told me it won’t update because the phone isn’t connected to the internet (it is indeed connected to both cell data and WiFi).

I can’t proceed further in the setup because it thinks there’s no internet. The only option is to then start over which sends me back to square 1 and unpairs whatever progress I made.

I’ve tried every single solution I could find. Called Apple support, went to a local Apple Store, hard reset both my phone and the watch many times, charged them both to 100%, signed out and back in on my iCloud and Apple account, and still can’t get it to work. The one thing I haven’t done is try pairing the watch with a different phone.

Never had a problem like this with Apple products and it’s driving me fucking crazy that nobody can seem to help or tell me what the problem is.

The apple support thinks it’s because the watch OS is too old, but I can’t force an update without pairing.

Thanks for any help you can offer.