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Charge 5 battery draining too fast

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I have had the new Charge 5 for 2 days. The battery discharges within a day. GPS is off, the phone is not set to always on. In looking over the troubleshooting instructions from Fitbit, it seems that you essentially have to disable all of the features that were selling points of this device in order to get decent battery life. Even my ancient Charge 3 got 6 days on one charge! Has anyone with this battery problem found a solution other than disabling everything?

 

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Mine went one step further…for awhile it had a red circle with an X in it! I removed the app from my phone and reloaded, disconnected it from Bluetooth and tried to reconnect it -I can’t even get it to acknowledge the charger now… completely black screen. D.E.A.D.

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@mja400 — Your story is very disturbing. It sounds like your wife's C5 is
new and well within the warranty period. Why Fitbit would refuse to
replace an obviously defective unit under warranty makes no sense.
Wondering what reason they gave and why they were so uncompromising.

Glad you asked about the promised firmware upgrade. In your conversations,
did Customer Support ever indicate they thought a firmware update might
actually be a solution for you?

I'm sure you realize already that firmware is unlikely to matter for a unit
that won't hold a charge for more than a few hours. As I've written here
before, even when I've had the fast-drain problem, a full charge still
lasted me almost 3 days. The workaround of restarting after each recharge
has restored that to a week.
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So glad I bought mine at Costco!

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Reading about people that are being refused replacement for C5s that are not lasting a day makes no sense at all.

As I understand it, the firmware is only going to be a fix for those who are getting sudden rapid battery drain after a few days of use, something that a restart resolves but will eventually happen again.

If you have done the restart and still can't get the battery to last a day (assuming you dont use the screen on all the time and heavy GPS usage), then it MUST be defective (possibly the battery), its not a firmware issue

 

Would someone from Fitbit like to set the record straight on this?

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They gave no reason for denying the replacement. I told them several
times that I thought it very unlikely that the firmware update would fix
the issue but they would not speculate.
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I got my C5 as a replacement for my earlier C3, which suffered from screen issues. It started this nonsense about 2 weeks after I got it, with the battery going to just 4%over the space of a few hours the day after a full charge. I've found the restart 'trick' helpful, because it mostly lasts anywhere between 5 and 7 days, but I really shouldn't have to do it at all. Then yesterday it went back to suddenly dropping (after 3 days) from 77% in the morning, to 11% in the evening just as I was about to go to bed. Monitoring my sleep is important to me, so I did the restart, just to see what would happen. When I checked in the morning, everything had been recorded, and the battery was showing 12%!. Go figure. It held at 11% for most of the day until evening, when it dropped suddenly to 5%. 

My husband has a C5, which he got before I got mine, it does not have this issue. I'd be happy if a firmware update fixed it, but I'm getting to the point where I'm tired of waiting (since March) and ready to go and ask for a replacement.

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My fitbit 5 needs recharging every 2-3 days. 
my older fitbit 3 averaged 6-7 days between charges. 
where is the firmwear upgrade that fitbit was working on to address the poor battery performance of the fitbit 5???

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I have had my Charge 5 for awhile (at least 6 months). I had no problems with battery.  I know it went 4 days without charging during that timeframe, but I usually charged it daily when I am in the shower.  Suddenly it loses a charge within 12 hours.

1) I went for a long motorcycle ride during which it recorded I did 20,000 steps!  Not sure if something happened then

2) I went for a swim without turning on water lock

don't know if either of those had an effect.

 

Thanks

 

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

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As of a few days ago, mine won’t hold a charge either. One day I had an issue where the face wouldn’t turn on. I charged it and it seemed fine, but would not hold a charge. 
I confirmed no updates are available, reset through the device, reset through the charger, and nothing. 

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Just had the same issue! I know I had 54% battery yesterday and this morning nothing! Although, yesterday I was having a hard time syncing. Don’t know if that has anything to do with it?!

I see no one responded to your query, yet. Hopefully someone who knows will answer soon!

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This is happening to me too, was fine about 48 hours ago and now does not hold charge at all. Have had the Charge 5 for two.months. I've followed all advice given both online & directly from Fitbit, but nothing works. Apparently they are aware of the problem, it is affecting every Charge 5 'in the world' (direct quote from chat this morning) but cannot provide any information about when the issue will be fixed. 

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I'm having the same problem. I also lost all my steps & my sleep history from the last time I synced. It wouldn't let me sync, so I logged completely out. Now my screen changed & I don't like it. Very frustrating! I guess Fitbit wants us to buy a Charge 6! 😳

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This is happening to me also. I got the Charge 5 for my birthday in November 2021 and now in June 2022 it will not hold a charge or connect to Bluetooth. Is Fitbit replacing these faulty Chatge 5's? 

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HI community. I just wanted to express here my frustration with this tracker. I was super happy with it's battery life and I just loved the overall product. Now, it seems like recently a new firmware update went live and my tracker is simply...useless. It only keeps the charge for 3 to 4 hours. I have turned pretty much OFF all the functionalities that I could and nevertheless it's worthless.

 

Now, anyone knows or is living the same problem? Again, this is super frustrating since it's not a cheap tracker and I only had it for 6 months. I have tried to updated again to see if something new has been released, but it seems like they are taking they time to fix this.

 

Thanks

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I've noticed the same issue over the past couple of weeks. It's even draining the battery when I'm sleeping. Getting peeved off as having to constantly put it back on to charge & then I forget to grab it & put it back on.

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Interesting.  After I posted this, the rapid drain .... just stopped?  Huh.  Pointing again towards a software screwup not a hardware fault.

 

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I bought my Charge 5 in February, after having a Charge 4 for over a year and a half.  Recently (Saturday, June 18 it died (went down to <4% in less than 10 minutes) suddenly from 80% battery.  I thought it was odd, so I charged it back up to 100%, which took roughly 3 hours.  It proceeded to die again in under 20 minutes from 100%  I charged it again, which took 3 hours, and reached out to support for Fitbit.  They told me this was a known issue with the firmware, and I literally just had to wait for an update to fix it.  No troubleshooting, no suggestions to fix it or anything.  They told me to just keep checking the app periodically for a firmware update, but that they wouldn't send me a notice or email, or update when this was available.  I have reconnected my Charge 4, and it is working fine for now, but just want to know if anyone else has seen it?  I don't know how I'm going to know when a firmware update is available, and I'm not really sure that is going to fix the issue if the battery is going from 100% to <4% in less than 20 minutes, regardless of settings used.  I have turned off GPS, Oxygen, basically any optional setting, and it still dies just as quickly even when I'm not wearing it.

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This post was from March 28th and there is still no firmware update?  My Charge 5 is completely useless right now.....it doesn't hold a charge for more than an hour before it's completely dead.  And, yes, I did all of the items outlined above.  This is not a user error, this clearly on the shoulders of Fitbit.  Unacceptable!  

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Me too!  Mine just started completely running out of battery life this past Saturday.  I see posts from March 2022 stating to be patient and wait for a firmware update.  That is not acceptable.  My Charge 5 is less than a year old.  Fitbit needs to make this right.  

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Mine is exactly the same, only I've had it just a few weeks. WTF? This seems to be a common problem with the most expensive tracker Fitbit makes. 

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