A couple weeks ago, I noticed my watch was no longer connecting to my iPhone when I was out of the house. Apple support pages say to unpair the watch, so I did that, and then I couldn’t get the watch to pair back to the phone.
So I took the watch to the Apple Store and the Genius there had me uselessly delete the VPN apps from my iPhone for no apparent reason, believing it to be related possibly. When that didn’t change things, he restarted my Apple Watch and then it was able to pair. But by the time I got home, it wasn’t working again.
So I chatted with Apple Support and they told me to call a phone number to get repair support. Because this was the first time in my life I didn’t get Apple Care+, I knew it would probably cost about as much as getting a new watch to fix, and I had other suspicions.
I’ve been pretty sure that the Bluetooth on my phone has been broken, but not convinced because Bluetooth LE stuff was still working (when unlocking doors in the building) and my AirPods were fine. But my Chipolo did not seem to be connecting, and, well, when I got a new iPad the other day, my iPhone was failing to do the wireless account setup thing with it where your devices talk to each other. But my other iPad set up the new iPad just fine.
So, I felt pretty strongly that my iPhone’s Bluetooth was broken and thought that I could go to the Apple Store again and use AppleCare+ to have them swap my phone out. But alas, no, the Genius told me they do not swap phones out in store anymore, that they only do certain hardware repairs. He ran a series of diagnostics on the phone which claimed that everything was just fine.
He told me to try wiping my phone, no thanks, but that I can also just order a replacement using the Support app on the phone. So I went home, and used the Support app to order a “Express Replacement”. Two days later I had my new iPhone, the transfer over went perfectly (I was worried the eSIM transfer would be impacted by the Bluetooth being broken, but it was not), and now my watch works and iPhone mirroring works and my Chipolo work. It’s great.
Anyway, that’s it for exciting updates in my life.