the watch has been updated beyond the phone's capacity. that compatibility you looked up was from when the watch 6 was new. a watch that has been updated can't pair to a phone that won't run iOS 17.
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Hi, I got an used series 6 3 weeks ago and unfortunately discovered I couldn't pair it with my iphone (SE3) unless I updated the phone to ios 17. I had the same error message you got even though the watch had watchos 9 and the phone had ios 16, both of which are compatible. I was forced to update to make it pair.
Possibly, try to contact apple support to check if there's any workaround?