Hello. My Fitbit Charge 5 is currently stuck in a boot loop where it shows the start screen, then goes black, and restarts, repeating this ad-infinum unless I put the charge 5 on the charger. If I tap the screen between reboots it will briefly show me the clockface.
About 24 days ago my charge 5 suddenly lost the ability to swipe. At first, if I tried really hard I could get it to swipe, especially up and down, but eventually it lost the ability altogether. When I could still swipe up and down, I was able to factory reset it once, but it made no difference. I also tried restarting the phone many times and it didn't do anything. Then a few days ago, the Charge was suddenly very low on power, so I plugged it in to charge. It was peculiar, because usually the battery lasts a relatively long time. Then today, I went to charge the device again, because I knew that it was dying a lot faster, and I noticed that it was dead, or unresponsive. The phone app said that it had last synced 2 hours earlier and had 42% battery at the time. When I put the device on the charger, it would vibrate briefly on a short interval, repeatedly. I left it to charge and eventually it stopped vibrating and the screen came on, saying that it had 10% charge. I left it to charge to 100%, but when I took it off the charger it became stuck in the boot loop, that I mentioned. I've tried restarting it with the charging cable, but it doesn't make any difference. I've also tried changing the clockface, while it was plugged in, and that did work, but it made no difference.
One interesting thing is that, to restart the device on the charger instead of doing the 3 button press thing I have to hold the button down until the restarts.
Before the swipe problem started to occur, I had no major problems with the device.
The firmware version listed in the app is: Firmware version 57.20001.188.58
I bought the Charge 5 about 16 months ago, December 29th 2022, from a Humana over the counter plan.
I've contacted customer support about it and they said they would get back to me via e-mail about the warranty status. I will update with any news.
Update: customer support gave me a promo code for 50% off on a new device (not including Google watches, Luxe, and Ace 3) and not including tax and shipping.
Update 2: I left it off the charger, intending to let it die, and then recharge it to see if that made any change, and when I came back to it about 7 hours later, it was no longer stuck in a boot loop, and I could use it as before. Battery was at about 80% when I checked it. Swipe still doesn't work, though.
