I’m not wearing five different smartwatches each week like my ZDNET colleague Matthew Miller, but I do switch phones quite often. That means whenever I move my SIM card from one device to another, all of my apps need to be re-downloaded and logged into again, and the wearables that I typically carry with me need to be re-paired.
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It’s not that big of a deal with wireless earbuds and headphones because all it takes is a press-and-hold of the pairing button and voilà. On both Apple and Android smartwatches, however, a complete factory reset is required, meaning unless you back up your profiles and system settings — which is a whole mess in and of itself because each manufacturer has its own means of local/cloud storage — you’re left a fully wiped wearable.
That’s not ideal if you’ve spent minutes, if not hours, tailoring your watch settings, panel orders, and complications to your needs. On One UI 5, the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic’s WearOS-powered software, you no longer need to reset the watch when switching between phones. This was especially handy when I recently moved from the Z Flip 5 to the S23 Ultra ahead of a weekend road trip, where the lack of outlets made the foldable the less reliable choice.
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The pairing process was as simple as sifting through the watch settings and tapping Transfer watch to new phone. You’ll have to be logged into the same Google account on the new phone for this to work. And it did so very seamlessly.
