Connected GPS not tracking when Android smartphone display is off

[MrKevvy]

Copied from this Inspire 3 topic:

I recently got an Inspire 3 and noted that as it does not have its own GPS, it needs to connect to your smartphone (Android in this case) to track. I use it for cycling. When the phone screen goes black to save battery, the Fitbit app (and all others) are put to sleep. It would stop tracking in this state. It doesn't catch up either when the device is unlocked; tracking is lost and only time spent on the exercise, being a simply difference of start and end, is accurate. Adding the app to Never Sleep Apps (which requires switching it from Unlimited to Optimized) doesn't work either... all apps. are still put to sleep when the phone display is blacked out and locked.

(Thus and obviously this is completely an Android and not a Fitbit issue!)

The solution for me was to install a keep-alive app such as Screen Alive which prevents the screen blacking, disable Adaptive Brightness so Android doesn't put it back up, then for every exercise session I give this app focus and drag the screen brightness down to the bare minimum to be visible so that the phone battery lasts as long as possible, and keep the screen on putting it in a pocket etc. with the screen facing outward so it isn't activated and stays on.

By doing this I can track rides of two or more hours accurately and it only uses 2-3% of battery in this time... this is by far the best performance of any of the four Fitbits I have owned!

The smartphone I was using then was Android 12. I recently got an Android 15 smartphone, and the same thing happens, so I would imagine all recent Android versions do this.

I notice that this issue is not mentioned in the How to use the Fitbit app on an Android phone documentation, thus I have begun this topic. Perhaps something on this is worth adding. Can anyone confirm if there are recent Android smartphones that don't do this, either by default or having a truly effective "Never sleep" option? I only have experience with Samsung Galaxy devices.

[Rich_Laue]

Easy fix. Move the Fitbit app to the background before the phone screen turns off. 

To move to the background. 

• If you have a virtual or hardware button to bring up desktop. Tap it. 
• I enabled swipe, so for me I press on the bottom of the screen and swipe up. 

[MrKevvy]

Thanks for the reply. I had already tried this but just in case the firmware or app. (or even Android) had updated recently, I tried it again, but it did not make a difference. As you noted I backgrounded Fitbit with the desktop button, then started a ride, but within a few seconds of the phone display going black the Inspire 3 readout freezes as it no longer is getting GPS info from the Android device, then drops to 0.0 which is exactly what happens without backgrounding it.

And as before as soon as I power on the display even not unlocking the Android device, the Inspire 3 instantly resumes tracking and shows current velocity.