Alta HR Won't Hold Charge

[HVKiesling]

Hello,

My Alta HR was just fine until my App updated on Friday and now it will not hold a charge for more than an hour or so. 

[CKW13]

Mine started having issues on July 3rd. It won't hard a charge more than 30 hours if that, sometimes it's about 12 hours. Fitbit - what did you do to us in the update???

[Aereolis]

They turned on "Always connected" and "All day sync" to be permanently on, and disabled access to disable them.  There used to be check boxes for them.  Always connected maintains an always-on Bluetooth connection with your phone, and drains quite a bit of battery in the alta hr & your phone.  I personally found that the All day sync didn't decrease battery at all, and would periodically sync your phone to the alta just fine.

[Aereolis]

Has anybody else had these issues? 

I had these issues with my Alta HR lasting 1-2 days when I had enabled "Always connected" when I had bought it brand new.  I did some reading and found that the setting has a significant higher battery drain, making it last a day or two.  Disabling this one feature allowed my alta HR to get about 5 days life which I was happy to live with instead of the rated 7 days.  I have had this option off for two years since i bought it, and just recently went to look at the settings, and found it's gone now! 

As another example, they recently added the feature for the alta hr to vibrate when your phone rings or you get some sort of notification.  When i had tried turning this on, my battery life shot down to about two days as well.  This would require always connected to be enabled to function as well, I didn't pay for a fitbit to have to recharge it daily (it's getting to that point now), i paid for a device to recharge it about once a week, to do "basic" fitness tracking.

If you check other posts, people have gotten answers from support rep's that this feature has been permanently enabled for all users in the application.  This was obviously done to decrease the number of calls into the support center, as if you search for issues with "fitbit won't sync", you'll find 525,000 results on google, so it's a big driver for calls into their call center.  However either through negligence, or a business decision these two features have both been enabled permanently.  Everybody who has an alta or alta hr will get these problems it seems, just look at it as a "feature".  They've probably put larger batteries in the charge 4 to counteract the extra drain - if the charge 4 lasts 7 days as advertised after this update, they knew in advance - it was a business decision, if the duration has decreased as well to a few days, then it was a mistake - negligence.

[Odyssey13]

Hi @Aereolis  the Charge 4 is more of a smartwatch than the Alta HR. It has many features, especially GPS, which will use the battery faster. I have an Alta HR and just use the time when showering to charge it up. It doesn't hurt to charge it more frequently now and again.

[Aereolis]

That's not what I paid for - a fitbit where I need to charge it every single day or else it will die.  I paid for a fitbit where i can charge it once a week.  The Alta HR will not charge in the 15-30 minutes I spend in the shower daily, it takes a few hours. I just downgraded the software to 3.21 via the help from an external mirror - and now there is an option once again for "Always connected" and It's now off.  In version 3.21 there is an option i can see for all day sync.  After version 3.21 (released may 14) the always connected option is gone.

I'll see what happens and report here. 

[Aereolis]

Looking pretty good this morning! I charged it a little before bed last night, and this morning battery has only gone down a little.  I'll charge it fully this morning, and see how long it lasts!

[Odyssey13]

Sounds good @Aereolis and thanks for the update. I know with my Alta HR, when it's charging, I do a restart of the device. It's one thing that we're told to do when there is a glitch and it's similar to rebooting the computer.

[CarolynKay]

Disappointed that this is my second Alta HR that won't hold a charge.  Thought I got a lemon the first time.

[Aereolis]

I have charged the alta hr using a 5v750ma charger to 100% effective 9am yesterday.  Today at 7am it's at 20%, so using the older software has not helped.  I should mention that i read in other threads that the battery could be damaged if you charge it with a fast charger - something i have been doing for quite a while.  This should not be a problem, as the device & charger are supposed to negotiate a charging voltage & amperage and only charge at those speeds, however I may have damaged my fitbit....

The older software has made no difference, unless the software is not doing what it says it's doing... i'll play with it a bit, and if I find anything untoward, i'll update, otherwise, i damaged mine, or the battery prematurely died.

[howellB]

Strange, so far all the stories/comments I've read, everyone is experiencing different things. For my HR, even if it's fully charged, it acts as if it's dead, I plug it in and re-start it about 3-4 times, then it comes on with half a battery. Every **ahem** day. 

[Aereolis]

Well, I've ordered a replacement battery from Ali Express... It should arrive in maybe 2 months, and I'm going to replace the battery. 2 years is about the norm that lithium cells last in smart phones these days, I'm not surprised it's the same in smart watches. Fitbit could design them to last longer if they didn't charge them all the way up to 4.2v and let it get down to 3.0v.  Same goes for smart phones. If they charged up to 4v and down to 3.2v the battery lasts 2-3x as long (think 4-6 years instead of 2).