Lenovo Watch 9 Pairing Failure — Fixed with a Battery Swap

I know I’ve been writing a lot about the Lenovo Watch 9, but this time the topic is how it became completely unable to pair, leaving me in quite a predicament.

I mainly use an Apple Watch Series 3 day-to-day, but the Lenovo Watch 9 comes in handy when charging is inconvenient during travel, or when wearing a smart display watch isn’t appropriate. It quietly does its job.

It was during one of those trips that I noticed it had become unpaired. I figured I’d just re-pair it later, but when I got home, things turned into quite the struggle…

The Situation

The Lenovo Watch 9 showed as paired with my iPhone X, but wouldn’t actually connect.

I tried deleting and reinstalling the Lenovo Watch app — same result.

I removed the pairing from iPhone settings and attempted to re-register — the watch didn’t even show up.

At this point, I was completely stuck.

To put it briefly, that’s the gist. Eventually it couldn’t even enter pairing mode, turning it into nothing more than a regular watch.

The Cause

Most likely, a firmware update on the Lenovo Watch 9 was to blame.

It had been running fine on version 2.4.3, but after auto-updating to 2.3.4 or 2.3.5, the issue started occurring.

The Fix

In my experience, the go-to fix for situations like this is to remove the battery and reset the device. So I decided to pop open the back cover and pull the battery.

Once the cover is off, just remove the coin cell battery. Leave it out for about 5 seconds, then reinsert it.

When you put the coin cell back in, the Lenovo Watch 9 will vibrate.

Now, all that’s left is to put the back cover back on, but…

It simply would not snap back into place.

I wrestled with it by hand for about 15 minutes with zero success.

So I grabbed two pairs of pliers and a spare cloth. The strategy: wrap the Lenovo Watch 9 in the cloth for protection, then use the pliers to press the cover in.

Applying even pressure from both sides gradually did the trick — it snapped in cleanly. This step alone took another 15 minutes…

After a long press on the crown to enter pairing mode, it paired successfully…..

What an ordeal…..

Conclusion

What I learned from this experience is that replacing the battery on the Lenovo Watch 9 is a real pain…

While some regular watches also use this snap-fit back cover design, the Lenovo Watch 9 was by far the hardest to reassemble.

Then again, considering the price, it’s hard to complain too much.