Charge 5 Not holding a charge

[dj12345]

My Charge 5 won't hold a charge for over a few hours. It lasted for 5-7 days until last week. None of the power using features (GPS, screen always on) are turned on. There is no physical damage to the watch. Why has my battery life suddenly made the device effectively unusable? Help! Thank you

[JohnRW]

Suggest you get it replaced under warranty

[April_B]

I’d rather they resolve the software issue because I’ve had to replace previous versions for other issues and quite frankly I’m getting a little annoyed at faulty devices.

[milango01]

Hi Davide

I am fitbit User from 2015. Charge 5 battery quality is very substandard. It does not charge anymore, once taken out of charger is becomes 0%. I have been in touch with customer support for past 3 weeks, they say warranty is over in India. Just over 1 year. As per fitbit warranty only users from Europe get 2 years for the same product.

It's very sad, the battery quality is so bad in charge 5. I was able to use charge HR and charge 2 more than 6 years together! 

There's no way the battery could be serviced here, as per your customer support team. 

How can you help me here? There are many users having similar battery bad quality issue

See atrached snapshot. I don't want to throw it just because battery is bad, in 17 month period. 

 

 

[P.C.Gamer]

I tried that. Since I was 2 months past the 1-year warranty date, I was given 30% off a new unit. I bought a Samsung watch instead. Done with this company.  

[milango01]

Thanks Gamer. Appreciate your inputs. I also would not accept 30% discount on new fitbit, because their battery product quality is poor and substandard. It's not correct for a company who can't service their product with tens of thousands of users in country like India. Shameful of Fitbit with such an attitude and responses. They just sell it and discard the users, if product works well beyond the 1year  warranty period it's our luck. Otherwise just have to throw it just because battery became dead. Much expensive parts working well. And they don't have a process or setup to service it. All companies otherwise has a way to service defectives/ failures atleast for 3 years period. Their customer care number is not reachable from India at all, at different times, different days. Their Shameful attitude making customers run around to communicate by email, twitter etc but can't talk over phone, neither they will call back. Is this called customer care or support? . I had detailed direct interaction DM with their team on twitter but of no use. With such a poor attitude towards their loyal customer, using fitbit from 2015, it's not worth to continue with fitbit.

I will also move out of fitbit, but will take a while, as I can't afford to spend much now. 

 

-ilango, 9840098316, chennai, India 

[Poedel]

this seems to be a common theme for many users - unhelpful support from Fitbit.

Charge 5 has design issues and Fitbit refuses to recognize:

https://www.techradar.com/news/fitbit-charge-5-blasted-by-angry-users-over-battery-and-connection-is...

[P.C.Gamer]

The fact that this has been a issue for almost a year is maddening

[kava0]

Having an identical issue. It was sudden and random, with no prior issues. I had been using it for a year. Now it won’t hold charge longer than 3 hours, even if it’s sitting on a desk. 

[milango01]

Thank you for your updates. Mine the battery does not hold for even one
minute. Battery is dead!

--------------

I am not coming back to Fitbit again, with current attitude and no services
they offer in India. 

I have not decided yet. My son uses Samsung and is happy. It also has full
excellent services support in addition to standard warranty for users in
India and other countries. 

[Ant5Marching]

Same problem here. Good battery life until last week, now only lasts a few hours. Obvious software issue that Fitbit needs to fix ASAP.

[Surf_Doggie]

Same here. On two previous occasions I have had software updates that broke my charge 5. This is the third time I have played this game. Generally after a couple of weeks they have an update and everything starts working fine again. I was expecting better after google took fitbit over.

[jenthusiasm]

I was wondering that, too. I’ve been shopping for a new tracker and ALL reviews hold the Charge 5 in high regard. As did I, until it died far sooner than it should have. 

[P.C.Gamer]

I got the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 and I'm loving it so far. The only downside is it lst 2 days, instead of the Charge 5's 8, but I knew that when I purchased it. It's not a big deal to charge it when I'm eating dinner. The fact that it lets me know when the battery is low (15%) is awesome to me. The 5 NEVER did this within a reasonable time. By the time I got a notification, it would die 2 minutes later.

I also love being able to see calls and texts (and type out full responses) on the Watch 5. I had set up the Charge 5 to do the same, but it stopped after a few months. For about 9 months, I didn't get any notifications. I never changed any settings. It just stopped working. It also stopped showing me the time when I flicked my wrist. Again, no change in settings. 

[Fitgal41]

I just bought mine and am having the same issue. So disappointing. 

[chiQ]

I tried that before coming here. At first I thought I wasn’t connecting it to the charger properly, but the last three times I’ve used it it’s gone flat within four or five hours of being 100 % charged. It started doing this at some point in the last few months. I use it as my back-up device, so it sits on charge for days before I use it. This is from a full week of life between charges before this. Six to seven days to four or five hours is an unreasonable loss of performance.

[ianl1427]

The notification problems was something caused by a phone FW upgrade to Android 12 or 13. You need to re-enable all the permissions and the way Android does it is so convoluted! The permissions are all over the place. 

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I tried Huawxx Bxnd 7 but it died in 2 weeks. I had to go down to the service centre to get it exchanged. Why are these wearables so unreliable? 

Back to using my replacement Charge 5. People who have paid for the S brand seems happy with their products but I'm not keen with the S brand because they only have watches. I prefer a band.

Perhaps Fitbit should allow users to reflash the same version of FW if we desire. These problems that we encounter might simply be caused by a FW flash that has gone awry because of the OTA transfer but still somehow manage to pass a checksum test. Perhaps this FW OTA transfer needs to be made more robust.

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Customer support was good and that was the saving grace. I got a replacement of a replacement when it too went faulty. But I don't know when I will no longer get a replacement. For the price in paying for the Charge 5, it should last a whole lot longer. 3 faulty units within a year is really too much. Certainly a design issue. 

[vb4321]

I have done this three times and it still is draining in from 100% to 20% in an hour or so. This just started happening two days ago. It's only a year old!  I need my fitbit I use it every day.  This is ridiculous.

[tucson2403]

I started having the same problem around the same time as everyone else. My Charge5 is only 9 months old and still under warranty, however, because I bought it on Amazon, they won't honor the warranty, which is just crap. It won't hold a charge for longer than 15 minutes, GPS is off, and there are no "always on" functions.  Looks like they rolled out an update that is messing up everyone's Fitbit, but won't acknowledge that or send an update to fix it. I feel like they are rolling dice, hoping that all these failures will generate new sales for an upgraded watch. This is my 4th and last Fitbit. I am looking to Samsung for a more reliable product.