iMarc

 

I’ve been using an Apple Watch for over 7 years now, and throughout this time I’ve owned the original Series 0, the Series 2, and Series 4. Recently I decided it was time to upgrade to the latest and greatest Series 8. Each time I’ve upgraded I’ve given the previous model to a family member and so my girlfriend has been wearing my old Series 2 for the past 4 years. Having been originally purchased in 2016, 6 years of daily use was most definitely taking its toll on the Series 2’s battery. My partner likes to cycle and workout, which hammers the battery even more than typical use. She was therefore keen to take on my old Series 4 which still has decent battery life. That left us with her otherwise fully functional 6 year old Apple Watch Series 2, that apart from the knackered battery, still worked absolutely fine and even paired with the latest version of iOS, version 16. I really wanted to give this to someone else in our family, and so decided to pay Apple £85 for a battery replacement.

 

Before booking the appointment with the Apple Store, I unpaired the watch from my girlfriend’s phone and paired it with my iPhone 12 mini running watchOS 16. This was so the watch would show up in my account under the Apple support web page. With my appointment at the Apple Store booked, I walked into the Apple store with both my Series 8 and the Series 2 paired to my phone to get the battery replaced. It was lucky I did pair the Series 2 to my phone, as the guy at the Genius Bar needed to run some diagnostics on the watch the verify that the battery was indeed knackered, and I guess to rule out any other faults or damage that they might get blamed for if the device were to come back faulty. With the diagnostic check passed, and my battery confirmed to be a dud, he sent it off for a replacement. Just over a week later, I received an email telling me my device was ready to be collected.

 

In actual fact, my device had been replaced. The box contained a factory fresh (or possibly refurbished) Apple Watch Series 2. Fair enough I thought. I can imagine how replacing the battery in such a tiny device that also has to remain waterproof might not be worth the hassle for Apple. I paid my £85 and drove home. Before handing the shiny new but also old watch to the next relative, I wanted to try and pair it with my phone again just to check everything was working as expected. This is where it all started to go down hill. I would instigate the pairing process, but get to the point where the Watch would insist on being updated, only to tell me it could not connect to the update server and to check my internet connection. I suspected this to be a case of lazy error handling on the part of the Apple developer who wrote this code, as my internet connection was fully functioning. Still, I tried on 4G just to make sure, and to my complete lack of surprise, it made no difference.

 

After some time Googling the error message, I figured out what the issue was. The replacement watch came loaded with an old version of watchOS which is not compatible with iOS 15 or iOS 16. What I needed to do was find an old iPhone running an older OS (my guess: iOS 14), upgrade the Watch to watchOS 6 (the last version supported on the S2) and then it would pair successfully with my iOS 16 device, as it had done only a week earlier. I tried on an iOS 15 device, just in case, but it made no difference. I didn’t have any older phones, at least none that were so old that they weren’t applicable for iOS 15, and nor did anybody I know. No worries I thought: I’ll go back to the Apple Store. Surely they have some kind of Mac app that can simulate any iPhone and load any watchOS version on the a device as deemed appropriate by a qualified expert?

 

My hopes were dashed when the geniuses in the Apple Store were equally as confused as I had been at first. They didn’t have any older iPhones and so the only hope would be to send the Watch back to the repair depot. They did have sympathy for the fact I’d paid for a new battery and now the device couldn’t be used, and so suggested I upgrade the S2 to the brand new Apple Watch SE, offering me a generous 50% discount off the price of a new one. I hadn’t planned on treating this other family member that much – but even after factoring in the £85 spent on a new battery, it seemed like such a good deal. I took them up on the offer, but the gentleman who served me said I could always pop back in on a weekday with the Series 2 and they’d still be able to send it back off to be upgraded, so it wouldn’t go to waste. I walked away with a new SE, and an obsolete S2 and got on with my life, and our family member was extremely chuffed with the early Christmas present.

 

A few weeks later, after seeing this stainless steel Apple Watch that originally cost £549 back in 2016 staring at me from the shelf every day I though maybe I should get Apple to fix it. It was still within its 90 day repair warranty, and the guy at the Apple Store had suggested It could be done. I have plenty of relatives with iPhones who would love a free Apple Watch. At £549, lasting almost exactly 6 years, it cost £91/year to own. That’s actually quite a lot for a watch. I can’t imagine being satisfied with any other Watch or piece of jewellery that cost that much only lasting 6 years. So I dropped it back into the Apple Store, and a week later it was replaced yet again. I went to collect it, and this time tried to run the pairing process in store. This time, the pairing process failed with exactly the same error message as before. The problem hadn’t been resolved, despite the service notes explicitly stating “customer wants to pair this with his iOS 16 device”. I didn’t push the issue with the staff – after all, they did look after me by offering the discounted SE. This was their “solution” to the problem in fact.

This brand new Series 2 was destined to sit on a shelf for ever more. What a waste.

The point of this post is not to complain about Apple or the staff in the Apple Store. The store staff did a good job turning around a bad situation. The point is to raise awareness about how utterly disposable Apple Watches are. I can understand that there must be a limit to how long companies like Apple provide updates to devices for, but a phone without updates will still work for a few years. The Apple Watch however won’t even pair to a modern phone, or even the the original phone I had when I bought the Series 2 (an iPhone SE, which if kept up to date would be on iOS 15).

 

So if you’re thinking of buying one of the more expensive, premium watches with premium materials, maybe think again.