How can I get data to the phone app if there is no internet available?

[DougMcK]

I am quite often away from internet access with some of my outdoor activities. For example, back-country skiing hut-to-hut.

How can I get data from the charge 5 to the phone without internet? I was on an overnight ski trip yesterday and couldn't review my stats in the evening. This seems kind of insane... The fitbit was connected to the phone fine, but no stats until my phone connected to the internet later today.

Surely there must be a way...

Doug

[Odyssey13]

Hi @DougMcK  your Charge 5 holds a full seven days of activity, per Page 54 of the user manual. 

[DougMcK]

Hi @Odyssey13,

Yes, I understand that.  My question is not whether I can eventually get the data, but how to get the data to the phone with no internet access.

Does your answer imply that is impossible?  That would seem very weird.

Doug

[LZeeW]

Your Fitbit uses Bluetooth to communicate with your phone, but that data syncs to your Fitbit account and isn’t stored locally on your phone.  So yes, you need internet access to sync and review your data on your app.

[DougMcK]

Ok, that's pretty disappointing. I can see why it makes sense to have long term storage on a Fitbit account (for several reasons).

But, I cannot see why the decision was made to make it impossible to display and analyze the data locally before there's a chance to sync with the account.

It seems pretty lame and, while I understand my use patterns may not be entirely typical, it's certainly not that unusual to be away from "easy" internet. If I'm using satellite, or other expensive, internet I definitely don't want to be spending data to look at locally generated activity/health tracking data.

I understood the Fitbit was the leader in this category but, having used it for a few days, I'm disappointed with a few things such as this problem and the flakey SpO2% number. (And I really don't like the phone app).  I'm leaning towards sending it back and trying the Garmin.