*Edit 2022-08-4 [ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING]: Added to {LOSS OF ROLLING RANGE DATA PERIOD} regarding change in 3-month chart.
Added sections {MORE MISSING GRAPH DATA}, and {INCONSISTENT AVERAGING CALCULATIONS}
Minor formatting cleanup on earlier sections. Including spell-check, because I apparently missed a few things.
*Edit 2022-07-31 [NEW WEEK, NEW DATA!]: Added sections below {CHART TYPE/DATE NAVIGATION}, {SLEEP SCHEDULE ONLY ON WEEK VIEW}, and {MISSING SLEEP SCORE}. Also edited subject line to indicate sleep module - that's what I use most in the app.
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Sooo many issues with the 'New Look Of Android Charts'.
I pretty much hate all but one aspect of the new app "look". I find it nice that avg hours slept gets it's own designated section rather than being bundled with another metric (hours in sleep stages, I believe it was).
Other than that, I strongly dislike bunch of things about the changes: {I'm looking at sleep data specifically here, but have seen the same problems with different sections.}
WHITE BACKGROUND
I liked the aesthetic of the dark theme. If there is a way to switch back, I cannot find it in the unnecessarily convoluted settings menus.
LOSS OF ROLLING RANGE DATA PERIOD
The entire point of a fitness tracker is to track your progress. If you can't compare across the most recent data of any span, it's not useful.
Week is hard-set to sun-mon. Month is the current calendar month. Year is the current calendar year.
Three month is interesting.Rather than being locked into calendar designations (and showing in quarters jan-mar, apr-jun, etc), the 3-month period starts with the current month. So my first screen is May-July. I am guessing that will roll when we click over into August...But maybe not.
2022-08-04: Confirmed: On August 1st, the 3-mo reporting period switched from May-July to Jun-Aug. If you squint and turn your head, it makes this the one place with a ‘rolling’ graph time-frame… Even though the change in reporting period is totally outside the user’s control and is rather useless besides in terms of meaningful data.
LOADING DELAY
I notice any time I click back from one graph to an earlier one, the app has to think for a moment. Measuring it, I got anywhere of 5 - 15 seconds watching the loading animation. Viewing a graph which I already loaded is a reasonable amount of time... Until I exit the module back to the main menu. Then I have to go back through the loading delay on each graph.
YEAR NOT DISPLAYED ON GRAPHS
Have you looked back past 2022? Only the week/month/three-month period is in the chart title. This requires keeping track of how far you've clicked back if you're trying to view older data. Not great when you've got years of use.
UNABLE TO EXAMINE SPECIFIC COLUMN DATA
Used to be, I could get more details by tapping on the bar and I would get a pop-up with that info. Now, I suppose I could do the same by noting which time period I wanted to examine, then going back to that period in the next chart layer up. Well. That wouldn't work anyway, would it? So I could extract my data and play with it in excel I suppose, but that's hardly a sustainable solution.
Regardless, there is nothing resembling interactivity with the charts.
In summary, this is a rather horrible update which makes the app much less useful.
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2022-07-31:
NEW WEEK, NEW DATA!
It feels like a never-ending font of unpleasant surprises to open the FitBit app these days...
Can't wait until tomorrow to see how the new charts handle the month change.
CHART TYPE/DATE NAVIGATION
I didn't notice before, but navigating the charts in the Sleep module is weird.
We've got Report Type and Time Period selectors. Now, what I would expect is for each one to "stick"; so starting on [Week]+[Hours Slept], if I switch to [Sleep Score] it would stay at the [Week] time period. But if I instead I went from [Week]+[Hours Slept] and clicked [Month], I would expect it to change view to [Month]+[Hours Slept].
That is the intuitive behavior...Right?
Instead, what I'm seeing is that the Report Type is primary, with Time Period being dependent. Each Report Type remembers which Time Period you last viewed - so switching between Report Types may (or may not) change your Time Period, depending on what you viewed last.
SLEEP SCHEDULE ONLY ON WEEK VIEW
For this one, I have to say I don't know how it was previously, but now that I see it, it doesn't make sense. All the data is there - is there a technical reason that start/stop times for [Sleep Schedule] can't be averaged and displayed as aggregate data?
Even if not, the other Report Types show day-by-day bars on the Month view. Why not [Sleep Schedule]?
MISSING SLEEP SCORE
Today (2022/07/31), according to the daily details provided in the sleep module, I got a sleep score of 83.
Looking at the charts, that sleep score is missing. This is not the only absence in July. I haven't looked back farther.
I check the app daily, so I am confident if the graphs had previously been missing data like this that I would have noticed before now.
Tomorrow is a new month! Can't wait to see what there will be to discover.
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2022-08-04:
Once More, With Feeling
I considered not updating this post again, but apparently people still find it relevant, and I am still finding "features" I'm not fond of, so here I go.
MORE MISSING GRAPH DATA
At risk of duplicate repeating the issue listed above in {MISSING SLEEP SCORE}, there are more areas where the same data is visible in one place but not another.
The example here is from the Time In Sleep Stages metric.
On the 3-month view from Dec - Feb, there is only one column visible. (I'm guessing that column represents a week, but since it's not actually labeled, who knows?) On the 1-month view, the full data from January is displayed.
A different element of missing data is the charming tendency for graph data to be shy. It really wants to be seen, but is nervous. You need to look away, and when it thinks you aren’t paying attention it will creep out and be there when you are looking again.
In vaguely more professional terms, since the update, I’ve noticed several instances of the graphs reporting no information available. After switching view and coming back, the data is loaded. The effect is intermittent, sometimes repeating multiple times for the same data when closing and reopening the app, and sometimes not happening at all. Below are just two examples I captured today
INCONSISTENT AVERAGING RANGES
On each graph, the chart title lists the graph time-frame, with the calculated average value for the displayed information. The unit of measure is not listed, however, when the subject is hours of sleep, many people will already have the frame of reference regarding expected ranges.
In the Sleep module, each of the graphs related to time periods reports a number which seems to make sense as average for one night sleep.
Except the 3-month view of time in sleep stages. Mine reports nearly 40 hours. I presume this is weekly average, but have not done the calculations myself to confirm.
A secondary consideration regarding time in sleep stages, the old graphs layout gave average times in each sleep stage. Now, the Time In Sleep Stages simply duplicates summary information which is reported on the Hours Slept graph.
Another (tertiary?) problem with the average numbers listed is the matter of Sleep Score. As far as I know, this value calculation is unique to FitBit. I understand higher is better, but I have no idea how I might independently confirm the numbers reported (or if there would be any value in doing so).
Aside from that, with the units of measure not provided for the displayed average, I have no idea if the average given in those sets of graphs is daily across all four time period graphs. Give the other inconsistencies, I can't trust that without calculating the averages myself and comparing.
Maybe next time I'll check the math. Today I've given this enough of my time and am off to other things.
[note: I received an automatic update when trying to post. I am not combing through this to figure out if anything is broken. If something seems missing, please comment and I will fix.This is frustrating because I only used the forum RTF editor and did not attempt direct use of HTML here.
Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and submit the message when you are satisfied.]
Best Answer
Part of me wishes it was just me. Getting back into running after some time away. How did we go from a full-screen graph showing recent runs, the date, their distance, and pace... to this?
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