Yes, ConcernedFit, you have stated this fairly and politely, and I totally agree.
I had a Charge for a year and now have had the Blaze for a year. From the first day, the features just kinda sometimes work and sometimes don't. Just keep trying and keep rebooting the phone and resetting the fitbit, and OK, eventually things will sync. On the Blaze, sometimes you get text and call notifications, sometimes you don't. You can follow the tips and tricks all you want, but no matter what you do, almost every connectivity-related feature works sometimes but not others.
The GPS feature on the Blaze? Well, go ahead and just add 15 minutes of wasted time every time you go for a run, you'll need at least that to get it started, and when the Blaze tell you to "check fitbit app" please don't have any expectation that the checking the app will provide you ANY insight at all. (Although when you open the app it will sync with the Blaze. Well, OK, SOMETIMES it will sync, other times it won't. So you drill down to the Blaze device setting to start a SYNC, which in turn MIGHT start a sync attempt, which MAY possibly in turn result in a successful sync. Unless it doesn't, which will be indicated by a red circle with an exclamation point in it, which presumably means that the sync failed but comes with no accompanying message or anything at all useful, just that big red warning. So you just try again later.) But OK, you got the GPS connected...there is now about a 25% chance that you will lose your connection half-way through your run anyway.
You could try removing the device entirely from your fitbit account and reconnecting it, but this itself will probably take 8 tries until it is actually able to find the Blaze. Which will feel like a waste of time when your Blaze continues to act just as flaky as it did before you removed it.
Or you could try asking fitbit to replace your Blaze, which I did. But then perhaps, like me, you can try non-stop for three days to get the GPS tracking to work on the replacement Blaze, but not have one single success in doing so. At which point perhaps you'll just go back to the old Blaze, cuz at least that one worked sometimes. Then you ponder why two Blaze's, which are identical in every way and have the same firmware revisions, but one kinda works and the also kinda works but is clearly on a different place in the works/doesn't work continuum (closer to the doesn't work end).
The you figure that maybe this isn't fitbit's fault, so you do a factory reset on your Galaxy s8. Every morsel of data and configuration is completely wiped clean, like you just unboxed your phone. You go to to the app store and update all the google apps just to make sure you have the most recent critical components updated. You then install the fitbit app and connect the Blaze (you were hoping that it would connect on the first try this time, but don't count it!). You don't have a single other BT device paired...you know, now your S8 is completely "stock" except for the fitbit app. And you soon realize that you just wasted your time, and even worse, now you have to spend 4 hours putting all your apps back on.
So for me, the battery drain is more like the last straw, because the whole fitbit experience is frustratingly bi-polar. Less so when I had the much simpler Charge on my wrist, but then again that essentially only counted steps, which, if that's why you are buying a Blaze, you might be satisfied. I know I am writing this somewhat satirically, but I swear to you everything is actually true. And I also swear to you that I absolutely LOVE the Blaze on paper, and LOVE it when it works; I am not writing this to flame the company, I am writing this because I really want to LOVE my fitbit every minute of every day.
In closing, I would suggest that your software development team be forced to use the fitbit blaze with a Galaxy S8+ for a little while. After a few weeks, they will surely "wire themselves in" until they come up with a product they can be proud of and that your customers can love.
Moderator edit: title for clarity
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