Charge 5 lost today's data on reboot

[kaberett]

My Charge 5 stopped syncing with my phone at around 9am this morning. There were other issues with the Charge 5 itself -- the display lagged and stuttered when swiping between screens, and while my total steps were increasing, I wasn't getting activity reminders, and my Active Hours step count dial was stuck on 0 (even while I could see my total increasing). I also noticed that when plugged into charge, the icon changed to the lightning bolt symbol, but the battery %age number was not increasing. (Active Zone Minute notifications were working throughout.)

I followed the steps in the article on difficulties syncing, including troubleshooting for Android (restarted phone, reinstalled app, restarted Fitbit from the on-screen settings menu): https://help.fitbit.com/articles/en_US/Help_article/1866.htm

None of those made any difference to the ability to sync with my phone, or with the Active Hours. Bizarrely, the step count displayed on my Android app occasionally went up by 1 or 2 -- I eventually wound up with 116 steps recorded in the app. (The Charge 5 itself thought I had done 3500+ steps at this point.)

I finally restarted my Charge 5 using the button on the charger, per https://help.fitbit.com/manuals/charge_5/Content/manuals/html/Update,%20Restart,%20and%20Erase.htm

My Charge 5 is now syncing. However, the Charge 5 itself (not the Android app) has lost all of the data since early this morning -- my step count has reset from ~4000 to 110 (not 116!), my 30 minutes' exercise/60 active minutes have been lost, and my heart rate data has all been lost. This is not a syncing problem.

Things I'd like to know:

1. why did restarting my device lose all of my data from today?
2. is there any way to manually record the missing active minutes and steps via the app/dashboard?
3. any ideas about what went wrong and how I can prevent it happening again in future?

[Talahthas]

@kaberett Sad to hear that you've lost your current data on your Charge 5 due to a restart of your device. But thumbs up and thanks for having tried all possible steps to get your Charge 5 up and running again by yourself! 👍
If you restart your Charge 5 next time, you should manually synchronize it with the Fitbit app on your phone before you restart it: Just open the Fitbit app, swipe down, hold for a second, release, and all data currently stored in your Charge 5 will be transferred to the Fitbit app.

[kaberett]

Unfortunately, attempts to sync weren't working before the restart,
which was why I needed to do the restart in the first place!

[dffghjjkk]

Great advice to manually sync! Tried that like 20x with a sync errors, restarted app, phone Bluetooth and everything with then the advice from Fitbit to restart the device and the lovely note to not worry that it won’t looker data! Just lost about 150 zone minutes and 26k plus sleep logs, very frustrating 

[Vinay.Prathapan]

I have this exact same issue happen, and strangely the battery died on me even though moments ago it indicated it was at 70%. I had initiated a restart and after reviving the watch, the clock reset to 12:00 am and now my data since the last sync is lost.

I can’t believe the shoddiness with which Fitbit’s software group seems to operate. Evaluating moving to Apple, sadly.

[Skurien]

This seems to be an ongoing problem for Charge5. I found this after I experienced the same issue today

[LordS]

Same happened to me this morning. My Charge 5 wouldn't sync - I tried restarting the phone, updating the app, disconnecting and reconnecting Bluetooth.

The only thing that worked was hard restarting the Charge 5, which then lost all my data from today. Very frustrating.

It must be some sort of bug. Please sort it out FitBit!

[cat_c_d]

Happened to me today too. Fitbit, any chance this will get fixed? I don't want it to happen again, I've only had my charge 5 for about a month 😞

[lily_pad]

It even happens on the Fitbit Sense. Exactly the same thing, had syncing problem, tried everything and it doesn't work. So I restarted the device and lost all data since last sync that worked, which was yesterday lunch. So frustrated!!!

[ericc17]

This happened to me today. I restarted for the same reason. It's frustrating that this is still happenening!

[Badandmad]

Wow, just wow. So half a year down the road and Fitbit still cannot figure out this issue. Happened to me today and it is now mid-June 2023. I lost a 6 miles run, 2 hours of weight lifting, not to mention last night's sleep, calories, and all that. Just frigging awful programming and zero craps are obviously given to things that should be fixed immediately upon first being reported by users. Fitbit is not a watch or a smart device that offers such an overwhelming slew of other features that such "glitches" can be ignored. It is a fitness tracking device and what good is it for if it doesn't track your fitness or doesn't synch it and loses the data. And don't even get me started on how shoddy the GPS is on this tracker...