Blaze Firmware Update - 17.8.200.3 [Closed]

[AndrewFitbit]

Update 5/6/16:

Hey all,

I've been keeping a close eye on this thread, and I wanted to give a quick update.

For reports of Blaze steps and/or distance being inaccurate, I think this is definitely something worth looking into. I've passed on all the feedback to our team so they can investigate. As a friendly reminder, remember that accuracy depends on many factors.

Here's a couple things being worked on:

• Excess Calendar Notifications
• 'Auto' brightness setting is too dim or adjusts slowly

For 'Auto' setting being too dim, you can switch to 'Normal' as a workaround in the meantime. Please note switching to 'Normal' will have a slight impact on battery life.

I'll provide updates when I can. Thanks everyone. 🙂

Update 4/27/16:

The firmware update should now be available to everyone. Update your Blaze and let me know how it goes! You can read the release notes for version 17.8.200.3 in the lead post or check them out on our help site. 🙂

Update 4/23/16:

Sorry for the wait, here's the release notes!

"The Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages are now available on Blaze. Note that Blaze is only available for pre-order from fitbit.com in China, Japan, and Korea.

This release also resolves a couple issues:

• Some customers were unable to resume a paused FitStar workout.
• Some customers reported problems with the Blaze screen (display)."

You can find these release notes for this update (17.8.200.3) on our help site.

4/21/16:

Hey everybody,

Some of you may have noticed there's a new firmware update for Blaze! We just started pushing this update out yesterday, and just like any other update, we'll be rolling it out in waves. This update focuses on a few bug fixes. Release notes will be posted here soon.

Thanks!

[bbarrera]

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@MattG92 wrote:
I don't tend to read the products manual before I buy it.... Not sure if others do?

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@MattG92 For consumer electronics my research is usually limited to a) web reviews, b) YouTube reviews, and most importantly c) the return policy in case I don't like it and want to return. If its an appliance I'll go a check Consumer Reports.

In my experience, consumer electronics have basic manuals, get hyped in reviews, or they try and spin things positively (to keep the free review units coming), so the most important thing you can do is make sure there is a good return policy (e.g. REI, Costco, etc) as its hard to get the full story without dedicating significant time to reading comment section of reviews, or going to the forum. Life is too short, buy it, try it, and keep or return.

[FerdinandFitbit]

Hi everyone! It's grea to see you in the forums!

I'm glad to tell you that new features are coming for the Fitbit Blaze. You can find more information of what's coming ahead on this link.

Any question you may have, feel free to let me know! 🙂

[meresydotes]

@FerdinandFitbit I asked this morning - will there be fixes in the new update? New features are nice and all, but if the thing doesn't WORK, they're not the place to be concentrating effort. People have been reporting the following problems:

1) Steps inaccurate when arms swing more than a little bit.

2) GPS inaccurate.

3) Unable to force sync with a computer.

I'm sure there are more, but I've experienced 1 and 3 myself and seen lots of complaining about 2.

[jb262004]

When this is just an open promise???

[chrisc76]

I had a charge hr which caused a rash. ( fairplay to fitbit they gave me a full refund) but i foolishly bought a blaze which i am having problems with

[bbarrera]

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@DibaSr wrote:
My blaze works EXACTLY like the website said it would. It never said it would have 3rd party notifications. It never said you could reply to messages. The 4 clock faces on the blaze are exactly what they said they'd be on the website.

To the people complaining about advertising features coming soon, clearly you don't own an apple product. Apple had an event based around software updates that won't be available 3+ months. This is whining just to whine. The new blaze update is more than I had expected.

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@DibaSr My Blaze does not work exactly the way the website says. It is not able to track my rapid HR changes, therefore I can't use it for my interval training. During interval training its common to see my HR go from 155 to 135bpm within 10-20 seconds, I've never been able to see that with Fitbit PurePulse on either Surge or Blaze.

When the Blaze launched there were a bunch of posts that the website had clock face images that were not available on the watch. Search this forum and you'll find other posts like the one I just shared. Maybe you purchased later, but I can assure you that a lot of us remember seeing clock faces on the Fitbit site that are still not available on the Blaze.

Then we had the April firmware update that introduced a lot of step counting accuracy issues. And even before that, anyone coming from Fitbit One or Flex has noticed less step counting accuracy during daily use.

Its not just whining to whine, these are legitimate complaints. Many from folks like myself had better accuracy with less expensive trackers like Fitbit Flex. The folks that I know with a Blaze are generally happy, don't realize there are accuracy issues, and frankly they don't care that much. Thats just fine. However some of us have higher standards when upgrading to a more expensive product from the same company.

Overall there is a lot to like about the Blaze, that doesn't mean it isn't without issues.

[chrisc76]

Well said bbarrera
My friend was only made aware of this issue when i shared this post with her

[DibaSr]

@meresydotes When you talk about GPS, do you mean when connected to the Fitbit app? Never had that problem. You said something about the steps on tracking correctly on a treadmill, is that correct? If so, that would be an annoying but understandable issue. I've had it not count steps on an excercise machine before.

[meresydotes]

@DibaSr I'm not sure how the GPS works, as I never use it. However, people have been reporting that it cuts corners or something, so routes end up shorter.

As for steps on the treadmill, at first, I thought it was specific to the treadmill. It shouldn't be, as steps are steps and I was definitely taking steps and not holding the handrails or anything. Then I discovered that it would count treadmill steps accurately if I kept my fitbit hand on my body. Which sucked.

Then, I got tired of keeping my hand on my body and decided not to anymore. And my steps were counted accurately enough. The only thing that changed is that I stopped swinging my arms so much. It's actually OK when running (I just keep my hands up by my chest and they just move with my shoulders), but I feel like I'm doing the zombie shuffle when walking.

Also, until I disabled all of the auto-workouts, it decided that all my steps, and especially my workouts, were elliptical, which caused it to undercount all steps, not just workout steps.

People are reporting that these problems started for them with the latest firmware update, but I've actually had them since my previous fitbit, a charge HR. So.

And have you noticed that fitbit moderators are not responding to my questions about the next update containing actual fixes, rather than just bells and whistles?

[81gem]

Same issue as many others, installed an update and now my app will not sync and get the error message, 'cannot connect to fitbit.com'. The more I read the community posts the more I despair at what a shoddy piece of equipment you are peddling, the negatives are starting to far our way the positives and like many before me if these posts are correct my blaze will soon be sent back.

[bmiller1969]

if you go walk for example 3 miles and you use another device, I use map my
run on my phone. The blaze was always off by half a mile to sometimes as
much as a mile compared to the map my run app. The reason being is because
the blaze does not accurately count your steps so it does not give a
correct distance of exercise. You probably would not notice unless it was a
route you have always walked and knew the distance or used another device.
If you take off walking and only use the blaze you more than likely think
it is correct when in actuality it is not.

[Txtea11]

Does anyone know how to "unsubscribe". When I press at the bottom of my email on "unsubscribe", it takes me to another web page indicating that it is not able to open the page. The same result using my iphone 5S.


I have pressed about 4 times to put these emails in "junk" fold and they still keep coming. Any ideas are greatly appreciated.



Thank you.



Martha Zurita

[Julia_G]

@Txtea11, follow the link in your email to open the thread, then make sure you are on the "full" and not "mobile" version (scroll down to the bottom of the page and choose "full" if you are on the mobile version).  Then scroll to the top of the page and choose "topic options".  There you can select "unsubscribe".

[bbarrera]

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@Txtea11 wrote:
Does anyone know how to "unsubscribe". When I press at the bottom of my email on "unsubscribe", it takes me to another web page indicating that it is not able to open the page. The same result using my iphone 5S.

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@Txtea11 You are seeing a recent bug with Fitbit's community web platform. I'm having the same problem and fix it by removing "?nobounce" from the end of the URL. Its a real pain, not sure how the problem got started but the other day (Sat or Sun?) the problem started with too many redirects and the page would fail to load. Then it seems someone on Fitbit's web team added the ?nobounce to the URL, and that didn't help as the page would still not load.

In summary, to workaround the problem change this:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Blaze/bd-p/blaze?nobounce

to this:

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Blaze/bd-p/blaze

And you should be able to load the forum webpages, until the next time it happens, which has been averaging 3-5 times a day for me.

Hope that helps.

[Txtea11]

I followed your instructions and others too. I found "TOPIC OF OPTIONS".

I see the following 5 lines in light grey and the last one in Turquoise color, but I do NOT see "unsubscribe".

Mark Topic as New

Mark Topic as Read

Float this Topic to the Top

Bookmark

Subscribe


Printer Friendly (in turquoise color)


What am I doing wrong?? Thank you.

[meresydotes]

Whenever I post, I see a checkbox to the right of the post box that says "Email me when someone replies." It's checked by default. I'm going to guess that unchecking that would unsubscribe. It may only be there on the full site.

[Kmransom123]

@Txtea11  You may want to check your settings for this forum.  Click on the gear icon in upper right corner (if you are on full web version). From there go to "Settings".  Then go to "Subscriptions and notifications."  

Check those settings as well - 

Hope that helps.

[Julia_G]

Hi, @Txtea11, you are looking at the "options" button at the top of each post.  You need to got to the top of the page and choose "topic options".  You can unsubscribe there.  Here's a screen shot:

[Rich_Laue]

Here is a third way to subscribe or unsubscribe.. Go to the top of the page and click topic options. 

[Julia_G]

@Rich_Laue, that is exactly what I suggested and posted the screen shot for.