Charge 5 Periodically stops recording any data

[SFGG]

I've had my Charge 5 for 6 months.  

On Thursday 16-Mar, no data was recorded in the app between 5:26pm Thu through 5:21am Fri when I reset my Charge 5 (no HR, steps, or sleep info during that time). I am certain I had relieved my usual "all hours movement" notification from my Charge 5 after 6pm on Thursday.

This happened again Thursday 23-Mar. On Friday morning, I found the app had no data recorded between 12:30pm Thursday and 5:30am Friday when I reset my Charge 5. This time, I had synched and checked the data on the app before I went to bed and it showed movement hours at least between noon and 5pm. When I woke, I saw no sleep data, and the movement data after noon the previous day was also missing. The app also showed no steps data even after synching, when my Charge 5 indicated 256 steps. All the steps showed up as 5:30am steps when I reset my Charge 5.

As a preventative measure, I had done on-FitBit resets between the above occurrences (no record of exactly when). That did not help; this failure reoccurred. I have now followed the "3 step" reset using the charge cable, but have little confidence this failure will not reoccur.

I am a long-time FitBit user (since the Charge 1) and this is the first device that has failed in this way. I am extremely frustrated by the unreliability reflected in this behavior. How do I determine the root cause of this? Is it a hardware problem for which I should contact customer service?

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, thank you for sharing that you've been experiencing this inconvenience with your Charge 5 data and that you already tried a few troubleshooting steps, @SFGG.

In case this is an issue related to the app not showing your information, please try the following steps: 

• Log out from the app.
• Clear Cache for the Fitbit app on your phone's settings (Settings > Apps > Fitbit app > Storage > Clear cache)
• Restart your phone. 
• Log back in to check if you're able to see the tile. 
• Try to set up your Charge 5 as a new device in your account if you're still having the same problem. 

In addition to the three pulse restart you mentioned, if your information is not being synced properly, please make sure to follow the steps listed here and check these compatibility requirements as well. 

[SFGG]

(I am certain I responded to this once already, but that post does not show.  Weird.)

In order to test the what was failing, I waited a week after the 3-press reset on 24-Mar to see what would happen. On Friday, 31-Mar the problem occurred while I was working out and I got to see data loss occurring as my workout was progressing. The 3-press reboot of the device had not fixed the problem.

After the 31-Mar failure, I uninstalled and reinstalled the FitBit app on my (Android) phone and did a 3-press restart on the device, then synched. My lost data did not reappear, but the sync was otherwise successful. On Monday, 3-Apr I did an on-device reset because my Charge 5 failed to record my heart rate during my workout, although it did not lose the record of my steps. As this was a different symptom than previous, I decided it could be user error.  I did reset the countdown on testing to see whether the uninstall/reinstall of the app worked.

It has now been two weeks since I uninstalled and reinstalled the app on my phone and 10 days since my last device restart. There have been no further failures.

TL;DR: Uninstalling and reinstalling the FitBit app on my phone appears to have solved the problem.

[DavideFitbit]

@SFGG That's great news, thanks for sharing this update! Let me know in case you experience any problem again. 

See you around in the community.