Charge 5 battery draining too fast

[SharleneH]

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?

[cputnam14]

Wow, yours is much worse than mine, so far anyway. At least mine is still
functional. I have a perfectly good fitbit charge 4 that I might go back
to. I got the new charge 5 because of all the hype. Why did they put out
a product when they must have had at least an inkling of what was going to
happen. And the whole "wait for a firmware update" that apparently has
been coming for at least a year or more is poor customer service to put it
mildly.
I've been a fan of fitbit for many years and have progressed through
whatever charge they started with up through the charge 5. I wish they
would just get their act together.
Good luck with trying to return yours, I hope you're successful!

[SunsetRunner]

Absolutely reprehensible behavior from Fitbit.  We have been waiting for a fix to this for months so the only conclusion I can make is, this cant be fixed.  We are left with dud "fitness" watches with zero recourse.  Ridiculous!! 

[ChrisB1966]

The rapid battery loss, looks to be truly random and nothing to do with options that we may have set. My latest experience was while just wearing the Charge 5 while gardening, no exercise selected/GPS is always by phone anyway.

It has now behaved normally for 4 days, but for how long will that continue.

No one has resolved it, all that has happened is that people are using it in a limited way. 

[shimsim]

@DavideFitbit appreciate you taking the time to give some kind of feedback but I do think it's a bit off the mark.

As @Cazzzzy mentioned, this was originally brought to the attention of Fitbit on 29 Sep 2021, possibly earlier unofficially but let's allow some time for Fitbit to investigate and confirm the issue, so that still means we are 6 months and we are expected to believe it just needs a firmware update? That might be true, but that implies a rather serious issue with the hardware that requires some pretty complicated workaround or that Fitbit just didn't prioritise fixing this, either way, this is hardly building confidence in the brand or product. 

I think its also very frustrating to keep telling customers that they are using it wrong, not even Steve Jobs got away with that (well kind of), either its a hardware issue or its not and the majority of people who are following this tread have already tried the 'best answer'. On the subject of that,  it is kind of adding insult to injury because its not the best answer, nor has it been updated with the latest information nor is it even solved, so why is it marked as solved? 

Why not update that to say something like ....

"GPS usage and the always-on display will cause faster battery drain BUT under typical usage conditions, you should expect 6-8 days of battery life. If you do notice any sudden battery drains, please follow the instruction to reboot the device. We are aware of a firmware issue that is affecting the GPS on some units and causing this rapid drain but plan to release an update to resolve this soon. In the meantime, we apologise for this inconvenience, please stay subscribed to this thread for updates."

Would that be too much to ask?

As for suggesting SpO2 data is something a customer should accept as the cause or contributing factor for shorter battery life, that is just plain wrong for 2 reasons .... a. i was getting 7-8 days with SpO2 on with my replacement device (before it died) b.... Its one of the main reasons for purchasing the Charge 5 and nowhere in the marketing material does it say it will reduce battery life. If there is some small print, I would like to see it.

I don't need a colour display with 12 terrible face designs, I like many others want a health tracker with as much data collection as possible AND with the longest battery life possible because everyone is sick of charging devices daily.

[Belanger1580]

The battery life randomness is beyond Frustrating. This morning I had 89% when I took it off the charger. I did not work out, do not have GPS always on, and do not have the display always on, and when I looked down at my watch this evening, it was dead! I’m to the point of switching tracker companies!

[Bike-man]

Shimsim you are on the mark.  Appreciate your response.  

[Cazzzzy]

@shimsim I do like your remark about the Clock Faces; I thought it was just me! They are truly awful and only 3 meet my criteria of:

- clear time without progress bars taking over

- day & date in U.K. month order 

- always shows 24hr clock (this was another waste of my life, attempting to find out why one clock face STILL didn’t show 24hrs even though my settings on the FitBit App - and it must be the Advanced settings via a web browser, not the App 🤬) - were set to 24hrs. Answer - it’s simply another stupid clock face that simply doesn’t show 24hrs …. Arrgggggghhhh

And I could go on … but am losing the will to live,  

And reading other posts - one of the constant worries will now be the INCONSISTENCY of a Charge 5 watch. Hopeless product.☹️

[Clemens13]

My impression is that the people at Fitbit will respond to these threads every so often just so you keep thinking they care. By the way, being an old guy, what is "firmware"? I know hardware and software. Are they talking about having to update the operating system of the tracker? Can they do this over WiFi?What I really want, to be perfectly honest, is a device that will consistently and accurately track my steps. That's all I want or need.I don't need a choice of clock faces, most of which are totally useless. You only need a choice of 2 - analog or digital. I don't care about GPS; my phone does that just fine. If I needed accurate GPS tracking, G-A-R-M-I-N.I don't need it to track my heart rate or blood oxygen level. (If for health reasons you need to keep on top of this, I hope you are not relying on a Fitbit!!)I don't want the device to track how many flights of stairs I climb (Ooops! not any more) or active minutes, whatever the heck those are. It doesn't have to have a color display.  I don't need it to answer my phone or respond to texts.I don't need it track my sleep. Oh goody! Another thing to stress about. Maybe the Charge 6 will track my anxiety level!As to battery life, if I can get 5 days per charge, great! 3 days consistently, I could live with that. This every day thing, not really acceptable.Simple is better. The original Zip, great. Tracked steps and went for months on one battery. The Charge 3, still pretty good with a charge that lasted 5-6 days. This Charge 5, lots of additional features but maybe 2 days per charge. Maybe. 

[Bike-man]

Clemens13, I too vote for anxiety monitoring for the Charge 6.  😁 Great idea!  
Right now you can get a good sense of anxiety levels from reading this thread on battery 🪫  issues.   My understanding of firmware is that it is similar to an operating system for the device, hey I’m an old guy too.  Your point on simplicity cannot be taken more seriously.   A lot of what I would call whizzbang features are kinda lost on those in our age group that appreciates reliability over features.   But hey, if the manufacturer of a device can please everyone’s needs and do it well, why not.   This is where Fitbit has dropped the ball.   

I do not use the gps, but I do like the sleep monitoring and readiness score.  So as we beat our heads against the wall wailing about this devices shortcomings and malfunction, Fitbit tries to placate us with temporary superficial remedies.  
Hope they can prove me wrong soon.  

[Clemens13]

I was thinking we need one of those “I am not a robot” tests for the responders from Fitbit.

Sent from my iPhone

[JaniceTurner]

I wish I had seen these comments before I bought my Charge 5.  I definitely would not have purchased it.  The battery life is WAY worse than my Charge 3. 😞

[AnnieFanny]

I love my Fitbit —. I’ve had several.    I charge mine every morning while I’m in the shower — I’ve never runout of batterie life yet.   I wear it day and night — takes 15 minutes to recharge.    There are days I forget to charge it and it’s gotten low but never actually died in me.   I just make a habit of trying to remember to charge while showering or dressing.   No big deal!   

[foreversoul]

Frequent charging is a work around for those with battery drain issues, but far from ideal. Most of us bought the Charge 5 for the advertised 7 days of battery life and just want to charge once a week and not worry about it for the rest.

The other major problem is that lithium ion batteries degrade much faster when they are being discharged and charged more frequently. Batteries have a certain number of discharge cycles before they need to be replaced. So discharging a battery every day rather than every 7 days is effectively reducing the lifespan of a battery 7x faster. This will basically kill a battery rapidly and you will start to notice your battery life significantly reduce in a short period of time. 

[Clemens13]

Unfortunately that is what must be done. Not exactly “as advertised”. Also, 15 minutes would not cut it. I’ve gone 30-45 minutes and still had the dread 99%.

Sent from my iPhone

[KathyJUK]

If only mine lasted a day.  It is only lasting about 3 hours 😞

[ChrisB1966]

foreversoul is correct, and just to add to that charging when the charge state has not gone down much back to full is probably the worst thing to do. In an ideal situation 20-80% is probably best 90% is okay and 100% if you know you will use up some % quickly

All this becomes very difficult with the random nature and makes it difficult to avoid 'crashing' due to low battery.  

[Bandit3138]

Hello,

I have found that resetting my Fitbit and restarting my phone after I have
used it's GPS to track my run stops the excessive battery drain. It is a
pain but in my case it works.

Rob

[StephaSophie]

Same! My husband bought the 5 when his 4 broke several months ago and has had no issues, so when mine broke I did the same. According to the associate on live support chat, my battery is lasting an average of 1.09 days. I haven't been exercising outdoors due to weather, so it's not like it's trying to do extreme things with the device. My charge 4 lasted 10 days on vacation where we were constantly swimming, hiking, and walking - and I only charged it for 10 minutes or so every few days when I remembered to plug it in during a shower. I've had to charge this device for 40-ish minutes every afternoon, while I'm mostly sitting at home working on my computer. I am so disappointed with this device. 

[cdcsmith2000]

Same.  I'm about ready to send it back.

[Rockyrugosa]

I upgraded to a Charge 5 this week.  I experienced the rapid battery draining that many others have experienced.  The first thing I did was to go into settings on my laptop and turn off the GPS as this seemed likely to be the problem. The problem continued.  So here's the thing:  turning off GPS in the settings on your laptop DOESN'T TURN OFF THE GPS. NOT AT ALL.  NOT ONE LITTLE BIT. This is the little detail that Fitbit won't just come out and say.  To address the issue you must use the Charge 5 itself, go into settings, GPS, and change it to PHONE. ( There doesn't d\seem to be an option to just turn it right off)  THEN go through the exercise menu, ON THE DEVICE, and turn off GPS for EACH INDIVIDUAL exercise.  This seems to address the battery issue.  They continue to say that they are working on an update that will solve the issue.  I wish they would just make this process explicit and save so many of us the frustration of puzzling it out from the veiled hints Fitbit will provide.