Charge 5 Stuck on Fitbit Logo / Not reacting to restart

[Untilitkills83]

Here are the basics for what has lead up to this unit effectively showing the Fitbit logo and being completely unresponsive to restarting it:

I noticed about 4 days ago that the unit would light up on my wrist with no motion.  I didn’t raise my arm, there were no notifications coming through, my arm was completely still.  Out of nowhere, it would decide to display the time.  It would happen sporadically but fairly often.  It wasn’t at a given time, I tried to keep note of the time in between it displaying the time or ‘lighting up’ and it would either be 30 seconds, a minute, 5 minutes, seconds, etc.  There was no formula to it.  I figured it was just a little glitch, nothing that I minded.

With this consistent lighting up whenever it felt like, my battery was draining quicker than usual.  Normally I would be at the gym for 2 hours and would not charge it till the next day.  Regularly, after that long without charging it would be at, the lowest previously, was 80%.  Over the past few days however, it dropped to 60% and would take significantly longer to recharge.

Yesterday, I had set the workout to ‘Treadmill,’ and it worked without fail.  It counted steps, kept the time, ‘talked’ to my phone, etc.  For all accounts, it was working fine.  Once I completed my treadmill workout, I stopped the workout and started a ‘weights’ workout.  Since I wasn’t looking at my wrist, I didn’t notice that after a while the screen changed to the Fitbit logo nonstop.  No notification, no buzzing, nothing to give me that little heads up on my wrist that something happened.

So now, this Charge 5 is perpetually stuck on the Fitbit logo.  It doesn’t react to any interactions (swiping, tapping) and after restarting it, the device will just return to the Fitbit logo.

Any help aside from a ‘you should’ve purchased a warranty’ or an offer of a discount on a new device would be appreciated.  If nothing, I’ll be happy to quit Fitbit sadly and just purchase an Apple Watch.

[Untilitkills83]

I’ll be honest and say hopefully you have better luck.

i contacted support, spoke to a very helpful customer service rep and went through everything with her.  She even had me send her a video of simply trying to ‘reset’ my Fitbit and the video showed the screen going black and just reverting back to the Fitbit logo a couple times.

since I didn’t have a warranty and their tech team reviewed my issue, I was provided with a 35% off coupon that COULD NOT be applied to the new Fitbit charge 6 which is lesser in cost than the charge 5.  I personally took the discount as an insult and as such will be moving beyond using Fitbit devices.  I’m not paying well over $180 for something that is looking like it will inherently die at the expense of what I see others saying are issues resulting from a bad update from the company itself.

best of luck to you and hope you get a better result.

[Blazer83]

I am having a similar issue. I feel the buzz when I connect the watch to the charger but no screen.

The 3 pulse start makes the Fitbit logo appear, and seems to give a window of a few seconds where I can connect my phone with the watch.

I can change even change the clock face during this window but nothing gets resolved.

I have Firmware version 188.58 installed and if I try to update the firmware it says there is not enough battery. It says "Battery Empty"

Sorry for hijacking your post but I just wanted to give this thread a bump.

Patiently waiting for a fix...

[Victamon]

"Implied warranty"

If it won't do the minimum of what it is supposed to do, due not to any discernible cause of wear & tear (but instead to a defect of some sort, in this case seemjnfl6 from compamy-issued nomstoppsble.irrversible firmware update), then (most jurisdictions will honor) a warranty of it, up.to a few years past purchase. Enforcing it might be tricky, but there are laws concerning it. A product can't simply stop.working for no good reason without compensation expected.

[ARamos1]

Having the same issue … opened case w support . Offered 50% discount on 5 ONLY. 

interesting time to happen…. New firmware upgrade and release of Charge 6 this month . 

 

[Untilitkills83]

(Heavy sarcasm) not suspicious whatsoever

[RasNabeel]

@ManuFitbit This method doesnt work. I am having the same issue and after following your suggestion not only it has been disconnected from the app but also stuck on the logo screen.

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Fitbit wont do anything about it if it is not under warranty. I faced the
same issue and now have a dead fitbit charge 5.

[JoshBuckley08]

Second Charge 5. Same thing as the first. I'm absolutely DONE with Fitbit now. I've used their products for over 10 years now and it's clear they have no intentions of making sustainable products. Rather they've gone the route Apple has. Products are guaranteed NOT to last even a year.

Super frustrated, super DONE with FAKEBIT

[RasNabeel]

I completely agree. I have the same problem 2 dead Charge 5 **ahem**bit lying with me with no FIX for it.

Instead of resolving the issue all I got was a discount voucher to buy a new one and there is no guarantee that it will not fail again.

Extremely disappointed on this behavior as I have been a loyal Fitbit customer for almost a decade but I guess its time to move on and switch to a better brand.

[Lizzietennisgrl]

Hi!

My Fitbit Charge 5, has been doing this for a total of 2 weeks. Each of the suggestions Fitbit has provided I've done almost daily for the last two weeks. I have been a faithful Fitbit owner since 2014 and am disgusted that I cannot use it the way that I've been for years. It randomly has the logo at bed, during the morning, all of the time. I hope Fitbit gets happier soon! 

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Same! I'm so annoyed with all of this! 

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Same, I'm going to revert back to my Charge 4 😞 It's really frustrating. It doesn't seem like Fitbit cares, since they know that this has been an issue.

[Untilitkills83]

Real nice of them right?

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If you’re lucky enough to get a discount voucher it’ll only be towards a new Charge 5 and not the 6 which is up for ordering.

funny, they haven’t said how a new charge 5 would avert getting the same results with the updates being sent out.

[candieapple]

I had the same issue for about 2 weeks as well. I had just upgraded to a premium membership and paid for the whole year so I felt I was stuck with Fitbit. I was fed up and just bought the Charge 6 and havent had any of these kinds of issues.  I dont know what is wrong with my charge 5, I gave up on it. Sorry not the news you want to hear! 😞

[candieapple]

Its been weeks of this sh$t and Fitbit has done nothing to remedy any of these issues!

[HikerConcordia]

OK, so almost a month later and here's where this is:

I did all the recommended fiddling around, restarting, reconnecting to the app, etc., etc. At some point in there I think my battery did die. Recharged. Reset. And so on.

The short of it is this - - I've been wearing the FitBit Charge 5 as a watch for the last few weeks and it's been doing that just fine. Keeps time. Tracks my daily step count. Counts my daily mileage. Takes a guess at the calories burned. Sends it all to my phone. I have NOT tried to use it to track any exercise periods.

Until today. What I noticed first is that the exercise modes I can choose are all different from what I used to have. Like, I had removed "Swimming" but now it's back. "Hiking" and "Walking" have disappeared. So that seems to indicate that the device got a big reset in there somewhere. (I've also been getting these vibrate notifications telling me to get up and move; which I wasn't before.) Anyway, I tapped on "Treadmill" because that seemed closest to my old "Walking" and went off for a walk to log in my 10K+ steps. Darned thing worked just fine.

Now, it IS a lot cooler outside than it was when I first started getting these problems. So maybe it still isn't fixed (if the problems were heat or sweat induced). I'm not a power user trying to track all kinds of different activities. But it's more or less working for me as a watch and as a step counter. It syncs with the app on my phone. It hasn't frozen up in the last month.

I'm on firmware version 188.58 and wondering what will happen when the update rolls in my direction.

[JUNERH]

I have exactly the same problem with a replacement Charge 5,  It started with the logo problem in June. I have tried every recommendation and work around but the problem persists. ( Since 2016 every one of my Fitbits has failed in the first year.)

I  too have resorted to using my Charge 2. Sadly I will not be buying another Fitbit 

[kkaboom]

Mine is also having this issue. I was told by fitbit support to just buy a new one????

[HikerConcordia]

Not even a coupon offer?

My suggestion is to leave it be for a couple days. And then try all the
suggestions for restarting and relinking to your app. It MIGHT get the
thing working again.

At least, my Charge 5 is working as a watch again. And it'll track
exercise. But if it's still working come Spring/Summer I will be very
interested to see if it still works during hot and sweaty exercise.

[kkaboom]

I did get a coupon offer of 35%, but they don't sell this fitbit anymore and the coupon doesn't work on the Charge 6, so I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do with it.

I'm glad yours is working again, I'm letting mine drain completely and then recharge it, fingers crossed!

[Victamon]

[trigger warning!, Mods you might should <sarcasm> hurry n delete this as it suggests something unfavorable about the brand! Oh snap, now you _definitely_ got to remove this ,seeing as it could be (mis)construed as "discussing moderator activity".. while youre at it, yous might as well ban me again for another few weeks.</sarcasm>]

@kkaboom 

The discount won't apply toward the next model in the same series? How lame.  I recommend looking into implied warranty of merchantability,m as it may apply in your jurisdiction or otherwise cover case of this defect outside the manufacturer warenaty but still within a reasonable amount of time

[kkaboom]

Very frustrated still!