You should be less excited after reading through the forums. We can all see the cut and paste responses to the many that are experiencing issues. After reviewing everything in this forum, making a few posts of my own as well at troubleshooting my own issues, I've come to several conclusions.
The Fitbit charge, if you just look at the watch features by itself, is impressive in what it can do.
Here is where I see the problem and what I think is causing all these failures.
It's not the watch, it's the app.
I think that many of these watches are not updating properly because it depends on a direct connection to the phone by Bluetooth. The same technology that has been consistently failing across all Fitbit products. It's not just this watch but all of them and the scales. There are multiple posts spanning multiple years about connectivity issues. The response is almost always about resetting the watch through a series of steps of which they all involve the connection with the app. There used to be a time when I could connect a device directly to the computer and update it through that connection instead of the Bluetooth connection. I could even sync the watch with Fitbit directly through that connection.
When I look at my phone and see that my Bluetooth is turned on and the app tells me to turn Bluetooth on, it's clear the app has no idea what state the phone's Bluetooth connection is in. During setup of the watch, the app finds the watch, indicates it's connected and then fails somehow to pair the watch properly. It takes repeating the process of "pairing" several times before it finally takes.
Having an android phone, here is the definitive set of steps that based on my experience with FitBit, should cover everything.
Step 1: Scream as loud as you can to get the frustration out early, then delete the device from the app.
Step 2: Go into your app settings on your phone and clear data. (not cache, the data will clear out everything including your info.)
Step 3: Uninstall the app.
Step 4: sigh in frustration but remember you've already screamed this out.
Step 5: plug the device into it's charging device.
Step 6: Reboot the phone
Step 7: while the phone is rebooting, reboot/reset the watch. This varies by device. See notes on steps for Charge5 below.
Step 8: When the phone comes up, go into the Bluetooth menu, make sure the fitbit device is removed from the list.
Step 9: Turn Bluetooth off then back on. (this should disconnect the phone from any other devices it might be connected to)
Step 10: Download and install then sign back into the App and re-add the device . Sometimes after you get the number to input for pairing it will fail to connect. Just hit the back button and repeat.
Step 11: If this should fail to get the watch connected. Repeat everything from step 1 again and then call Fitbit on the phone.
Notes:
Fitbit customer service over the phone has actually done a pretty decent job of getting things fixed or setting you up to get a new unit.
Charge5 reset can be done by either pulsing the button on the device charger 3 times with one second pause in between each push, or there is a reboot option in settings.
I would highly suggest that the FitBit engineering team take a look at how the app communicates with the phone as well as the device itself. It appears to me that there are indicators that the malfunction starts with some kind of failure in the app and then that failure cascades to the device itself making it appear as if it's a firmware issue.
Meanwhile for anyone that has a failed update, call Fitbit directly. I would infer that the systems FitBit has for tracking customer service issues, might illuminate the problem more clearly if they suddenly get an influx of calls.
For those of you that have had it with Fitbit. Check out the Garmin Vivosmart [ https://amzn.to/3bd8Fhb ] It's similar but not as colorful.
