I've had my Fenix 7s for several years now, paired successfully with an iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 6s, but I can't get it to pair with my new iPhone 16 Pro.
What works:
- Pairing Fenix 7s with iPhone 14 Pro
- Pairing Fenix 7s with iPhone 6s
- Pairing other bluetooth devices with iPhone 16 Pro
What does not work:
- Pairing Fenix 7s with iPhone 16 Pro via Settings => Bluetooth
- Fenix 7s does not appear in the list of available devices
- Pairing Fenix 7s with iPhone 16 Pro via Garmin Connect app
- Click the blue + button
- on "Select Your Device" screen select "Browse all compatible devices"
- on "Compatible Devices" screen select "Fenix", then "fenix 7S"
- next screen shows "Pairing Your fenix 7S Device" with "Searching ..."
- No devices are shown
- After a while the "Open Troubleshooting" button appears
Troubleshooting I have already tried:
- Powering off watch, powering back on watch
- Un-pairing the watch from the old device (iPhone 6s)
- Taking the watch to "Connectivity" -> "Phone" screen
- Taking the watch to "Connectivity" -> "Phone" -> "Pair Phone" screen
- scanning the QR code on the "Pair Phone" screen from my phone
- Powering off phone, powering back on phone
- Deleting Connect app, powering off phone, powering back on phone, re-installing Connect app
- Re-trying to pair with old phone
- pairing with old phone still works fine
- Testing other bluetooth devices with iPhone 16 Pro
- all other bluetooth devices work fine
- Checked that I am on the latest version of all available software:
- Fenix 7S software version 18.14 (f40ace5)
- iOS version 18.0
- Garmin Connect app version 5.5
Because my phone works with other bluetooth devices, and my watch works with other phones, I thought maybe there was an incompatibility between Fenix 7 series and iOS 18, or with iPhone 16 bluetooth stack. But I can't find any reports on the web for this.
Has anybody else successfully paired their Fenix 7 series watch with an iPhone 16 Pro? Or with any iPhone running iOS 18?
