Correct me if I am wrong, my understanding is that it is ok to transfer the settings from the old phone to the new one before unpairing the Watch, I just shouldn't pair it to the new phone before unpairing it from the old one, right?
I am looking at the Apple's instructions here:
Ready to get a new iPhone? Learn how to transfer your Apple Watch from your old iPhone to your new one.
support.apple.com
What I experienced is if you create a situation where your new iphone pairs with your AW before you erase your old iphone, then during that time the AW gets confused and gets corrupted. Mine got so messed up when I tried to open the AW by raising my arm the apps would flash and the audio would ding ding and wouldn't quit. When I tried to re- pair it to the new iphone it froze.
As I understand when you activate your new phone, you should first unpair the AW before doing anything with the new phone, Then when the new phone is up and running OK, and the old one is reset open the watch app on your new iphone 15 and pair it. In my case I had corrupted the AW so bad that I had to reset it to factory new. And then install it from the new iphone after the old one was reset ready for trade-in.
Overall I give Apple a C- grade as the operation to activate is less than good. Needs better instructions on what to avoid. I didn't even see my problem on any YT videos. I guess I got lucky in manually resetting the AW Ultra2 to factory so I could start over.
There is also another bug in the system that now Wells Fargo blames Apple and Apple blames Wells Fargo. To verify a CC in Apple Wallet worked great for Apple Card, Capital One and Amazon Chase. But the Wells Fargo CC just says I need to call WF to activate. When I do they claim it is activated on Apple Wallet but the Wallet still says I need to Call the WF number. I can't even delete it and start over.