Charge 5 battery is draining quickly

[Stahawk]

Around a week ago, plus or minus a few days, my Charge 5 battery life seems to be about 6 hours.

I've reset it, I've turned off the Buetooth on my Android phone, turned the Bluetooth back on, re-paired the Charge 5, changed thr watch face from Target, and the problem is still there.

Before this sudden issue, battery life seemed to be days (6?), though I typically topped it off every 1-3 days.

Could this be an issue that arose from some update or new feature/change, perhaps the new metrics like cardio and target loads?

I welcome tips on how to fix this or notes that others have experienced this recent change, too.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[terminators]

My charge 5 just started to die quickly over last day, goes from charged 100% to 5% in 6 hours 😳

not tried anything much with it apart from a reset on the watch itself 

does anyone know if there has been an automatic update recently 

[shellyD68]

Mine too… didn’t realise there had been an update but now it makes sense … reading other replies, mine is losing charge a few times a day and has been for an over a week. I’m going to try the suggested moves. 🤞

[ukwebfan]

Been sticking with charging as much as possible. A restart or 2 got sensors back but progress wasn't made until yesterday as battery drain got down to under 3% per hour. Iow it's holding a charge longer than 30 hours now.

[Stahawk]

Oof, after countless resets, etc., this problem remains. I now only wear it when I'm about to do a workout, just to track that workout, and maybe a short walk here or there. Otherwise, it's only on my wrist, because I forgot to take it off and put it back onto its charger.

I've given up on it, basically.

To my disappointment, the only thing I've found that is likely to fill its role for me is the one year old Charge 6. I'd like to wait until a Charge 7 appears, but there seems to be no real news about whether Fitbit will actually make a Charge 7.

So I've purchased a new-but-open-box Fitbit Charge 6 via ebay.

This is an unsatisfying resolution to this little episode.

[SunsetRunner]

I have also given up. This, plus the impending change to Google authentication (which somehow does not work with my Google Apps account, even though Fitbit is owned by Google!) has convinced me to just suck up the extra cost and buy a Garmin.

A shame really it was a good product, but what is the point in a sleep tracker that doesn't hold 8 hours charge. I can see the brand just being folded into the Google watch range eventually, and who knows what will happen then

[Forsberg]

Have anyone a solution on this issue? My fitbit charge 5 have the same battery issue? Fitbit doesnt answer my emails.. Maximum 1-2hour then the battery is dead. 

Please help 🙂

[GasBuster]

Mine started doing the same last month and have been trying to get it back to before. I think it has to be a software issue as this started happening fairly quick, very good battery life before that. Now I also cannot get into my account, having to set up as a new user after over 10 years.

[Jaana226]

It can't be that everyone around the world is starting to run out of battery life. Fix your software! I have the same problem with my battery. It happened a few weeks ago.

[Steevithak]

Up until yesterday, the battery life on my Charge 5 was around 6 days. Yesterday it abruptly started draining very quickly. Looking for ideas on how to fix.

Yesterday afternoon, I checked the battery level since I knew I was getting near my weekly charge time, it was about 30%. Later that day when I checked again, the Charge 5 was dead as if the battery had reached 0% charge. Normally a 30% charge would have lasted at least another day, not a few hours. I assumed I misread the charge level and attached it to the charger. This morning it was at 100% again so I put it on as usual. Within minutes it was down to 87%. By the time I got it back on the charger, it was at 70%. I rebooted it a couple of times, once from the UI and once using the button on the charge cable. I let it get back to 100% and put it on again. I checked it every couple of minutes and could see the charge dropping - by maybe 1% every minute or two, meaning it will be dead within a couple of hours. 

I've read through the forum postings and see that the official answer to the problem is Fitbit's claim that this is normal battery degradation due to age, which is clearly not correct. I'm guessing a firmware update happened recently and my fitbit received it yesterday? But I don't see a way to confirm that. The reported firmware version is 57.20001.194.91. I see a lot of posters reporting the same problem recently but not a lot of reports that normal function was restored. I'll try some of the other suggestions in the posts before giving up completely.

[Jaana226]

I also did the recommended restart but the software did not update. I have version 57.2000.188.58 and I cannot change it. I am located in Estonia.

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My watch doesn't send low battery notifications!