I bought a new Apple Watch for my wife. She has a 1st gen iPhone SE (she just loves it and doesn’t want to upgrade). The watch won’t work with her phone - obviously something I should have checked into before purchasing. Is there anything I can do? Like maybe swap the watch out for an earlier model?
It looks like anything from Series 7 down will work with your wife’s SE with iOS 15.
The small print from the Apple Watch Series 7:
Apple Watch Series 7 requires an iPhone 6s or later with iOS 15 or later.
iPhone SE was released after the iPhone 6s and can take iOS 15 so you should be good
Zndl points out correctly that the trick is to not update the watch past watchOS 8. I would hope the watch series 7 would still ship with watchOS 8.
The most recent watch that maxes out at watchOS 8 is the series 3 but that one is pretty underpowered, so I’d have a hard time recommending it.
