Charge 5 battery draining

[LouisGi]

After working great for a few months, My Charge 5 “died” 3 days ago for no apparent reason.  I was able to reset the device, but battery life is now about 24 hours.  I updated the device this am, charged to 100% & device is now less than 50% 8 hours later.  GPs, etc. is off. Why draining so quickly

Moderator edit: format

[DavideFitbit]

Hi, welcome to the Fitbit Community forums, @LouisGi. 

I appreciate all the information provided about this issue with your Charge 5. 

Some users were experiencing battery draining problems due to a problem with the GPS staying active and this should be resolved with the latest firmware update. 

I understand that you already completed the update. Could you please try repeating the three pulse restart method now that you've updated the firmware? In addition, please follow the steps listed here to improve battery life in general or let me know if you already tried these steps. 

I'll be around. 

[LouisGi]

Thanks Davide.

I tried both recommendations this morning and I'll let you know how it goes.

Best,

Louis

[SenFitIn]

The link you reference for battery life for a C5 is 7 days. I have never got this, more like 2.5 days.  Have done all the suggestions, phone GPS, etc.  Any suggestions?

[LouisGi]

Davide,

still got less than 24 hours. Woke up this morning to a critical battery level screen. 

any other thoughts before I reach out to CS?

thanks,

[themezman]

@LouisGi Yes. Don't bother wasting your time with CS.

  You can see from the Posts to this Topic from hundreds of other C5 owners, including myself, who have this rapid battery draining issue that only a couple have had the problem resolved by CS.  Most have been given "the runaround",  if even that, and are mad, frustrated, and very unhappy with the Fitbit product & Customer Service/Tech Support for it.

[Burnfan]

Yes! Mine is useless, is dead if not on the charger. 6 calls or chats with the support people. Wasted time to be told nothing. Wish I'd got an Apple Watch. 

[Chargelaura]

Fixed! Or at least usable. I was having immediate battery draining. Wouldn’t last a few hours. After lots of other efforts, I finally got the update to install by deleting the charge 5 and reinstalling it so the update installed, while charge 5 was on charger. And it has held for 3 days now, did this 3days ago and at 38% now.

Thanks,
Laura Feierabend

[themezman]

@Chargelaura   Thanks for the info.  I had to do exactly what you did in order for the firmware update to be available to me too via the Android Fitbit App.    Unfortunately, after the update completed, without any apparent incidents or errors, none of the LEDs come on, so it no longer records Heart Rate, or anything, and the C5 appears to be dead/not turning on.

 Glad to hear that yours is working now and getting good battery life.

[DudetteMI]

Hi Davide.

Yesterday I updated the firmware. I noticed a few hours later, after 90 minutes of exercise, that my screen was black. Had a few vibrations so knew it was on, but screen remained black. I was away from home (and access to the recharge cable to "restart") but noticed on my phone app that the device did recognize my exercise while black. Got home and plugged in and remained plugged it overnight. This morning, the accessed the Fitbit website and it shows I synced 1/2 hours ago, but now the phone is battery is dead and will not recharge AT ALL. The unit was purchased in Dec. 2021.  What's the warranty??

[themezman]

@DudetteMI  Your screen went black during or right after your 90 min exercise because the rapid battery drain issue, that almost all C5 owners seem to be having, caused the battery charge to drop too low to light up the screen, in order to conserve what was left of the  battery, but evidently there was enough charge left to track your exercise so you got lucky.

[DudetteMI]

So now I'm going thru the reset process --

 -On charger

- hit button on charger 3 times;  screen remains BLACK but I know its "responding" because it vibrates each time I hit the button

- re-syncing with the phone app -- phone find the Charge 3 but CANT complete because phone app needs me to enter the 4-digit code to complete the bluetooth sync process!! I can't see the 4 digits due to the black screen!!

[DudetteMI]

Went thru the prescribed restart process.

- phone on charger

- hit RESTART button 3 times; screen remains black but know reset happening because C5 vibrates after each 

- phone app re-sync: go thru steps. Delete C5 from app; delete app and re-install; attempt re-connect to C5. App required I enter the 4 digit code from the C5 to complete sync. BUT CAN'T SINCE SCREEN IS BLACK.

-So can't proceed....

[KellyRR]

In just speaking to CS this most recent update does not solve the battery issue and FitBit "is working on an update to fix this issue". Which is it?

I have always been a huge Fit Bit fan, and this is my 4th device (brand new charge 5) but given the multitude of issues with the Charge 5 this whole issue has me moving in another direction.

Shouldn't they be taken off the market until it is resolved. I would like the product to perform as it is advertised.

[themezman]

@KellyRR   At last Fitbit CS has admitted that the recent firmware update does NOT fix the battery drain problem!   We'll, if that is the case then a whole lot of C5 owners can stop wasting their time trying to do anything that has been told to them up until now by CS and by the Admins of this Forum.

  Owners can stop trying : (1)  to update to the latest firmware recently released. Not only will it NOT fix their rapid battery drain issue, but, according to many who have performed the update (including me), it is likely to cause new problems,  (2) nebulous procedures that involve charging their trackers to exactly 100% and then resetting it using either the USB connector button and/or tracker Settings Menu, (3) to get Fitbit to send them a replacement C5, because, as many owners have seen, it will have the same problem. (4) wasting time on the phone &  in chats with CS and then trying to follow-up with them using useless Case#s that are assigned to them.

 Now, if what CS told you is true,   owners have 2 options:

(1) wait for Fitbit to release another firmware revision and see if it actually fixes the battery drain problem as well as any new problems introduced by the recent firmware released, as reported by many C5 owners in this Topic (and me) .  How long will that wait be?   I have seen owner's Posts stating that they have been waiting since last Dec & earlier. I also have seen many more who were told this same story back around last March.

(2) not wait until kingdom come or pigs fly and buy a different tracker from a different company and try to get a refund for their C5 from the retailer that sold them this turd.

#2 is what I am going to do tomorrow or ASAP.  I not going to waste any more time waiting for new firmware, installion of it, & possibly having issues again with it, if and when it actually arrives. More importantly, not only  have I lost confidence in the Fitbit tracker's basic functionality such as battery lifetime, but I am seriously wondering about the reliability & accuracy of the methods used by the tracker to gather data and of the science behind and reliability of results from the analysis of that data.

I cannot trust anything from a company that produces such a shoddy product, knows that it is shoddy from an unbelievable number of reports to their CS about it, then continues to sell it for almost a year knowing that it is broken while lying to and keeping so many owners of it waiting for so long &  wasting their time on false hope.

[KellyRR]

Thank you.

The CS representative I was working with cut the chat off with no warning when I pushed to find out why this was happening and asked for a supervisor. No help at all.

I made arrangements to return my Charge 5 to Amazon (with a full refund). It is less than 2 weeks old and I haven't been able to use it for more than 5 hours at a time.

I loved all my other Fit Bits (this is my 5th). It's too bad that they rolled out such a poor product. I've lost faith after this fiasco.

[DavideFitbit]

Hi everyone, thank you for all the information provided about this issue. I'm sorry to see that you continue to experience the same problem with the battery. 

Keep in mind that some features will make the battery drain faster than usual, like GPS tracking, Always On Display or SpO2. As mentioned earlier, and if you haven't done so already, please make sure to follow all the recommendations listed in this article to improve battery life in general. 

If you already tried all these steps after updating to the latest firmware version (1.171.50) and you continue to have the same problems, I do recommend that you continue the communication with the Customer Support team so they can let you know about the next steps. You can click here to get connected. 

Thanks again for all your comments and information provided so far. The team continues to work to improve the Fitbit experience and your feedback is an important part of that process.