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?

[tcat007]

I did the full charge, restart (while on charger), on Saturday.  I still have 60%!  So it's back to what I was getting before 2 days of 100% drop in a day.  I used GPS for the first time when I got the 1 day drops, haven't used it since last Saturday.  So must be related to gps not resetting properly.

[Bunchadogs]

When you say "restart (while on charger)" - are you using the little button on the charger cable?

Curious - I feel like I've done this so many times I'm just missing some tiny detail to make it work!

[tcat007]

Pretty sure it was the on charge pressing charger button. I think I tried the be restart from watch on settings and it didn't work.  I'm still at 57% on my 7th day since doing that.

[Tommofski]

Mine was discharging from 100% to zero in 2 hours. 6 months old. Sent it for repair via Amazon item repair service. Fitbit sent me a brand new Charge 5 so I guess it was hardware i.e. bad battery and not software as originally suspected.

[tharp]

Yes using the button on the charging cable to reset the device

Moderator edit: personal info removed

[tharp]

Fantastic!

Moderator edit: personal info removed

[mac525]

All of this talk about firmware updates etc. is just FitBit stalling. I bought two Charge 5's on the same day. One works perfectly, one has horrendous battery drain and won't even last 12 hours. They are both Made In China but they are from different batches. The bottom line is, some of these devices are defective and need to be replaced. That's all there is to it. Disabling features, numerous resets, all the tweaks in the world aren't going to change the fact that a massive number of these devices are broken.

What do we need to do to get these devices replaced?

[JKOFFOTH]

Once my wife’s went completely dead Fitbit support replaced it.

John Kofroth

[tharp]

That is so nice of them!

Moderator edit: personal info removed

[GDSchulz]

Don't know that it matters. (And I didn't say that about restarting
while on charger. That was somebody else.) I charge to 100% then remove
from the charging cable, then restart using the restart button in
Settings. Works for me, 3 times in a row now. No further problem. My
theory is that there's some kind of software calibration that goes on
during the restart, but that's just a guess.

SPECIAL NOTE: I don't know where this button on the charger is that
everybody talks about.. My charger cable doesn't have a button. It's the
USB cable that came with the Charge 5.

[tcat007]

Yeah, I never knew about that button until someone mentioned it here.

 

[Rodpud]

Bottom of the charger there is a little circle button. Look it’s def
there

[Rich_Laue]

At the bottom of every page, and also in the Fitbit App, you will find a link to the Fitbit Help Docs. A search for Restart will 

How do I restart my Fitbit device?

[Maze1405]

Change 5 battery lasts less than 24hrs. Any advice?

[SunsetRunner]

Hello @Maze1405 

You can try restarting your Charge 5 to see if this helps your battery drain issue. You will not lose your data doing a restart. Look here to see how it’s done properly: https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1186.htm

😃 Let me know if this answered your question and helped the battery drain issue. 

[LZeeW]

Hello @Maze1405 and welcome to the Community.  The advice offered by @SunsetRunner is unlikely to help.  Fitbit is aware of the battery drain issue.  A moderator wrote that Fitbit is preparing a firmware update to address this issue.  I am merging your post with that thread to help keep you updated.

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, thank you for all your comments and feedback about this. 

Just to clarify some of the more recent inquiries, the team is still working to release soon a firmware update that will address the issue with the GPS chip causing rapid battery drain on Charge 5. This firmware hasn't been officially released and all the information will be shared in this thread as soon as it's available, but we haven't received other updates for the moment. 

If you're new to this thread, please refer to the steps mentioned here previously. If you have other problems with battery life that are not related to GPS and you already tried all the steps suggested earlier, please get in touch with the Customer Support team so they can provide you with the next steps. 

Please know that your patience and feedback are greatly appreciated and more details about the firmware update will be shared in this thread and in this article as well when more information is available. 

[tharp]

Follow the instructions Fitbit has laid out in the community forum.  🙂
*Tammy Harpin*

[mac525]

@DavideFitbit, this has been an issue for my FitBit for 5 months. Fitbit has been saying there's a firmware update coming for at least the last two months. How long as we expected to have a non-working device before this firmware update is pushed? What is the ETA?

[Maze1405]

Many thanks - I have restarted my device and will monitor over the next few days.