When WatchOS 6.2 was released, installing it on my Apple Watch Series 1 took a couple of tries, as it either wouldn’t find the new WatchOS version in the iPhone Apple Watch App on my iPhone 7 Plus or it would fail downloading. Once it was installed, it would crash and reboot the Watch Series 1 every 5 minutes. It took me two days but finally managed to do an over-the-air update on the Apple Watch Series 1 connecting to my home wifi to WatchOS 6.2.1 hoping it would improve the situation. It didn’t, the situation worsened.
So, now it would not only crash but be sluggish and almost not react anymore on inputs, if it crashes, it would crash without showing something on the screen, so I constantly force-reboot it!
Now googling for it, every site and solution guide said, to unpair it via the iPhone’s Apple Watch app, then go to settings app on the watch and select wipe all data. However once I confirmed this, the dialog would simply close and nothing would happen.
As I didn’t want to call Apple Support and spend hours on troubleshooting, I got an idea how to factory reset it using a trick:
1) Unpair it from the iPhone via the Apple Watch App.
2) Connect it to the home wifi network
3) go to icloud.com –> Find my phone –> Erase
This would factory reset the phone. Once it has been fully re-charged, pair it as an already existing Apple Watch by restoring from a backup!
A detailed description how to remote wipe a device including pictures, can be found at https://safeonline.ng/device/icloud-erase-device/