topic Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch in Apple

Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

Rhino777 — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 03:27:00 GMT

Hi!

I’m looking for advice on how best to handle an upgrade of both iPhone and Apple Watch where the old and new devices have all been purchased directly from Apple.

The phone is using a physical SIM, so no problem swapping that over, but how should the watch be handled? The old watch has an active paid for data plan.

Is the best option to:

Unpair the old watch from the old phone, which will create a backup on the old phone
Set up the new phone, by transferring from the old
Pair the new watch and restore from the backup made earlier
Activate data plan on new watch

If the above approach is correct or is there a better way? If it is correct, do I choose to keep or choose to remove the data plan during the unpairing of the old watch?

Would the above require the need to call customer services?

I’ve been unable to find any support articles covering the replacement of both watch and phone!

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

MI5 — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:01:55 GMT

@Rhino777

I'd treat them both separately

Transfer the phone first and get that working with the watch then transfer the watch..

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

Rhino777 — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 07:23:38 GMT

@MI5

Thanks for your reply, I did wonder if that might be a way to go.

If I do that, do I choose to keep or cancel the watch plan on either of the two instances of unpairing the old watch (once from the old phone and then from the new)?

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

MI5 — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 08:14:24 GMT

@Rhino777

You should, in normal circumstances, keep the watch plan both times, however, we know O2 has issues with this.

There is a guide here to help if you get any error messages

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

Peter_L — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 11:33:11 GMT

Hello. When I upgraded my Apple Watch and had an active Watch Plan I've just unpaired the old watch and removed the plan when you're asked if you want to keep it or remove it. This will only remove your plan from the old watch, it doesn't remove it completely from your account.

Then I paired the new watch and when I got to the point to choose the plan there was already my active plan there - so I've just confirmed that I want to use that original one and NOT to get a new one. It worked fine for me I hope this helps.

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

Rhino777 — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 16:34:57 GMT

Just reporting to say that I sorted out the replacement of both phone and watch as follows:

1. Unpaired old watch from old phone, which also saves a backup of the watch data to the phone. When asked whether to keep the data plan I selected to remove it, as suggested by @Peter_L as this just removes it from that device rather than from the o2 account.

2. Performed a backup of the old phone to ensure the watch backup was saved.

3. Used the Apple Quick Setup to transfer everything from the old phone to the new.

4. Paired the new watch with the new phone and selected to restore the watch settings from the backup.

5. Activated the mobile service for the new watch. This opened an o2 login page which then asked whether this was a new data plan or a transfer of the existing plan. Selected transfer and everything then worked.

Thanks for the help and suggestions!

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

Oxonian — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:35:12 GMT

Great @Rhino777 ! 👍

Re: Replacing Both iPhone and Cellular Apple Watch

Peter_L — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:03:40 GMT

I am glad that worked for you @Rhino777