[Update: Paused] PSA: The Latest Wyze Watch 44 Firmware Is Bricking Watches

If you have a Wyze Watch 44, hold off on doing any updates. According to several reports we’ve seen on Facebook, Reddit, and Wyze’s forums, the latest update is bricking at least some Wyze Watches 44mm models. The Wyze Watch 47 may be spared because it runs totally different firmware.

Update: 4/29: On Wyze’s forums, an employee stated that the company paused the update due to the reports of bricked watches. We’re seeing some reports that Wyze sent out emails to affected users with instructions to join the Wyze App Beta to fix watches affected by the botched update. The instructions explicitly stated NOT to remove the watch from the Wyze app.

You can join the Wyze Beta in the app by going to Account > About > Beta Program > Add Watch 44.

The original article is left report below

While we haven’t reproduced it yet, we’ve seen no less than ten reports stating the same thing. After attempting to take the new 0.3.68 firmware update released yesterday, the Watch will no longer work. Users get an error screen instead of the usual interface unique to the Wyze Watch 44 sizes.

Core Data Missing. Please connect the Wyze app to upgrade.

ver.0.3.68

The error message lists the latest version, so it seems the Watch thinks it updated, but something went awry. The posts we’ve seen on Facebook show users trying all the usual troubleshooting steps, from rebooting to connecting to the app as the error suggests. But none of that works, and it’s not clear how to factory reset the device.

On its forums, a Wyze employee acknowledged the report and promised to escalate the issue. Thus far, we haven’t seen any similar reports for the 47mm version of the Wyze Watch. That’s not surprising; in our own reporting, we demonstrated that the two are completely different watches with totally different hardware and firmware. Even Wyze lists the two sizes separately in its firmware notes.

If you have a Wyze Watch 44, hold off on updating for now, at least until Wyze can fix the issue. And if you already updated and have a bricked watch, Wyze suggests contacting customer service for now—but the messages we’ve seen suggest that customer service hasn’t been able to fix the problem.

We reached out to Wyze for comment and will update this article when we hear back.