Blaze Firmware Release - 17.8.301.8

[AndrewFitbit]

Firmware version 17.8.301.8 - Resolves a syncing issue with Apple iOS version 10.2

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Workout mode missing? Not a problem! Just follow the steps for adding it back. 

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 Hey everyone! 

We're rolling out a new update for Blaze, release notes below: 

• In addition to call, text, and calendar event notifications, you can receive notifications from email and other third-party apps on your tracker.Common emojis also appear. Keep in mind all notifications currently on your tracker will be deleted after the update.
• You can receive reminders to move throughout the day.
• Five new clock faces are available. Navigate to your device settings and check them out!

This release also resolves the following issue:

• Some users reported that auto-brightness was too dim or delayed.

Important to note: A sync is required after a manual shutdown or a battery drain in order to show the correct time on Blaze. This is especially important for your activity tracked by Blaze because you'll want to make sure it's associated with the current date and time.

[Samjpat]

Been popping back and forth to this thread patiently waiting for the update. Hope it's my turn soon. Good luck everyone

[bbarrera]

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@SunsetRunner wrote:
Apple watch is overpriced, poor battery life, no actual fitness. It has a HRM but pretty useless, takes a ready every minute. 

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@SunsetRunner yes, a popular thing to say to Fitbit fans. I like Fitbit too, but the bottom line is the Apple Watch is a better overall device.

"Fitness" is in the eye of the beholder, to me fitness is structured interval workouts on my bike, and tracking weights/reps/sets in the gym, tracking laps in a pool - you can't do that with a Fitbit but I can on Apple Watch. Wareable.com has tested a lot of devices and recently did a hands on review had this to say "we put the Apple Watch up against the Fitbit Charge 2 and found them to be comfortably close in their estimations of steps and distance." and also this about HRM "as reliable as Garmin's optical heart rate tech and stronger than the Fitbit Charge 2." and finally this about battery life "Now you'll get two days, giving you an extra day. That's what we found using the smaller 38mm model."

Not to mention how often I use the other useful features like multitasking - summer evenings timing BBQ with stopwatch, a timer for filling the pool, controlling music, and viewing/replying to texts. A huge surprise feature for me is the turn-by-turn directions, and paying with credit card. And during the day I use it to reply to texts (with Emojis and support for other languages), reply to Skypes at work, answering calls from wife when my hands are full, Shazaming a song, etc. Of course if I'm in front of my Macbook Pro I use that for texting, Skyping, etc, but even then I find the watch a great productivity tool when taking a walk every hour around the building.

Blaze is a nice option at $200, and if you have iPhone by spending more on AW you get a lot more. 

[NanaFields]

Battery life is why I still use my Blaze for every day and only wear my Gear s2 3g when going somewhere or going to the track. Wish it would at least last all day as a smartwatch and fitness tracker. I wouldnt mind just having to charge it over night, but to use it all day with notifications on and as a fitness tracker I have to charge it by 6 pm

[kenlpeters]

Well a few notes.  Lots of chatter moving to the Apple Watch.  I am Apple Fan, huge.  I chose the Blaze over the Apple for a few reasons.  1)  I wanted a watch that is watch, not a fittracker asking like a watch.  2)  I wanted some basic alerting features.  3)  I wanted the software on the watch to be fitness centric.  i think the Apple Watch is a pretty cool peice of technology, but I also know myself.  I will install apps and fun for a month or two and then it will become simply the three points above.  The Baze is the perfect fit and I am not over techno'ing myself for features I don't need or will not use.  That is how I look at the FitBit Apple watch debate.  

Also lets forget the fitness ecosystem Fitbit has is far better than Apples.  To be part of that ecosystem you need a phone or a Fitbit.  I am not wearing two devices.

Now onto the update. Like most I am happy to see progress, albiet not part of it.  I do find it interesting that there is huge hype to get and then folks are messaging it is bleh. I truly hope that is not the case.  I look forward to the notifications and watch faces.  The reminder to move is a nice feature that I will use but I do not require.  So anyway I will continue pressing F5 on my browser with one hand and pulling down to refresh on my phone with other.

Here Pinky Pinky Pinky, Here Pinky, Pinky, Pinky.

[joew143]

My fitbit has been updating for more than 30 minutes and I'm in the middle of a challenge.  Please help 🙂

[loftygit]

For all those wondering this is what the update pink arrow looks like...

I got the update last night, I am in the UK, using ios 10 on an iPhone 5. 

I have changed the face to one of the new faces,

I have sent a WhatsApp message to my phone to add it to the Notification list and then received WhatsApp notifications on my Blaze

I have received notifications to move

I am very happy with the upgrade, I can now look forward to only synching my Blaze a couple of times a day, rather than a couple of times an hour - until the next set of updates!

Thanks fitbit, it is everything you promised.

(Maybe next time you could remember that for some people,  

"Its not what you do, its the way that you do it!" )

[kenlpeters]

@loftygit - now you are just bragging... LOL  Poke the bear!

[Haidj1981]

😞

Đã gửi từ iPhone của tôi

[AlbertStClair]

I'm in the UK and i'm waiting waiting waiting........waiting 

[Haidj1981]

I still do not have an update

[Talahthas]

Guys, you all seem to not have understood the system behind this particular update:

You first have to reach a daily step goal of at least 17500 steps before your Fitbit account will be unlocked and get the update as a reward ... 

 

Regards

Stefan

[Darmichar]

@Talahthas - Don't forget, every comment in this thread also moves you down in the list 10:1

[jondhoward]

I bought my Fitbit Blaze a few months ago and, overall, have enjoyed it. I don't mean what I'm about to post as a drag on the device itself. That said, I think Fitbit as a company would be wise to reconsider release/rollout strategy moving forward. 

I bought the Fitbit Blaze knowing what its limitations/features were at that time and was fine with it. As soon as Fitbit started to reveal that an update was coming, however, it created excitement and anticipation. Of course, what goes up, must come down... When Fitbit began to slowly release the firmware update for Blaze only to pull it shortly due to bugs, I was disappointed. And I'm sure the developers were too. Nobody wants to have to pull an update due to bugs. Bugs happen, so I don't particularly fault Fitbit for this. 

I think the bigger opportunity, however, is around the slow but steady "trickle" release plan; it is frustrating to those anxiously awaiting the update. My brother texted me and he received the update last night. I'm sitting here today with no update. It should be made available to "early adopters" to opt in early; "late adopters" may not even want it yet, but they're seeing it before I do. Makes little to no sense. Fitbit would likely have willing guinea pigs in early adopters (such as myself) who would gladly embrace some bumps along the way in exchange for an early peek at the new update. 

Adopting a voluntary update approach to releases like this makes far more sense. It allows for voluntary testing and helps pace the relase based on natural adoption rates. 

Overall I really do like my Fitbit Blaze. And I know this seems like a gripe session. It's really not my intent. I'm just disappointed in how Fitbit handles these types of releases. It breeds frustration when a family member or good friend gets an update at one point randomly and I'm sitting here a day later still waiting. 

[Rich_Laue]

@Joew143 I would kill your app then start the update again. If your using cell 

 Data try wifi, or try updating through Mother device.. Worst case it should take 10 - 15 minutes. 

@Talahthas where did you get this false info from? 

It is being rolled out based on the location to servers, from the users point of view it will look random.. The only thing determining which tracker receives the update first is the load on the servers. 

One more not, we have been asked to limit this thread to problems that arise while updateing. Posting for the sake of posting is not helping things. 

[Cml7]

I love my Blaze and am patiently ( well maybe not so patiently) waiting for the update. Does anyone know what percentage of users now have the update?? I just would like to know if it is likely to take another week. 

thanks

[PieMavi]

Still nothing for me neither 😞😞😞

[Darmichar]

@jondhoward I'd be first on the list to test beta firmwares. I offered when this whole debacle started. Im sure there are likely hundreds more that would too. A separate, closed forum and an NDA and we're in business.

[AryanGupta]

Mine worked

[eulisef]

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@AndrewFitbit wrote:

Hi everyone, me again.

If your post was removed from this thread recently, it was because it was in violation of the Community Guidelines. Most of the posts were removed for being off-topic, meaning the content posted was not related to actually updating or using the new firmware version.

I created this thread as a place for users to report their experience with the new firmware. This is not a thread to complain about the rollout process, or a thread to complain about not having the update yet. I know there's frustration and I sense the impatience, but please keep this thread as clean as possible. Threads like this are a great way for us to quickly identify issues (like with the last update). 

From what I've observed, things are going well so far with users updating to the newest firmware. My guess would be that more users could potentially receive the update sometime this week.

Here's the lead post of this thread if you haven't yet seen it.

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@AndrewFitbit thanks for the reply Andrew. I see my post is still alive although it talks largely about the rollout process. Howevr, I tend to disagree on your claim that this thread should not be used to discuss the rollout process. If I go and create a thread with the title "Fitbit Blaze Firmware Rollout" I am pretty sure it will be brought down by mods.

As I mentioned before, I've been using Fitbit since Nov 2015 (Charge HR) and changed to the Blaze around March 2016. I have been around for approx. 2 firmware updates for the Charge and one for the Blaze and for all of them, the firmware was immediately available as soon as the release notes where posted on the "What's changed in the latest version" page.

So the overall compliant is why the mystery or the flawed rollout process? I've been working in IT for quite a few years now and I am fully aware of the DEV-UAT-QA-PROD process but it doesn't make sense that the new features and release notes were publicized since August and then the first days of September we get the "surprise" that it's going to be rolled out only to 5% of users. Was there a selection process to get into that 5%? Did those users agree to be in the "beta testing program"? Fitbit Support has been saying since the first days of September that it would be rolled out to all customers in A FEW DAYS....It's September 27th and there is a lot of people still complaining and waiting.

And yes, you found some bugs in that first release, they were fixed and thanks to that 5% rollout, the impact was not that big. However, you were not aware of those issues at the time (obviously) so the other 95% were actually being "impacted" by having a device that according to the website has "Reminders to move", third-party notifications, among others, but it didn't work on theirs.

Andrew, we are still waiting. September is almost over and there is still roughly 90% of Blaze owners without the features the watch "has". The development/testing process must be reengineered for future updates because the Blaze is a device that has a lot of potential and should be receiving updates with fixes and new features almost every three months.

Thanks

[TimothySan]

does this firmware suport cyrillic charecters? 

and as i can guess there is no Force update ?