Multiple issues with charge 5

[Duth17]

I’ve been wearing my charge 5 24/7 since early oct 21and I am not happy with a few things and am wondering whether they can be fixed:

1 GPS. I’m a cyclist and wear my charge 5 in conjunction with Cyclemeter on my iPhone. My charge 5 GPS have proven to be inaccurate and loses signal. The maps of my trips includes straight lines which is likely when the signal stops and restarts. This has reduced the distance covered on a number of trips which in turn reduces my speed, calorie count, and leaves me with inaccurate details. My Cyclemeter app records my trips very accurately.

2. sleep recording has never worked properly and according to my charge 5 I sleep between 3-5 hours a night which is not accurate. Many times I may go to sleep at 10pm and wake up at 6am but my charge 5 has only recorded my sleep from 1am-5am. I’ve tried tightening my band loosening it and switching between normal and sensitive, but nothing makes any difference.

3. blood oxygenation. When I check my health metrics there is no blood oxy data unless I tap on the blood oxy link which says that no data in the past 24 hrs. However there is a blood oxy graph with my data. 

All this data is important to me and part of the reason I bought the device after my Garmin watch broke. I had open heart surgery this year and I want monitor my health more closely and get my fitness back. If these are bugs in the firmware I need to replace my charge 5 or look at more expensive devices. This is my first Fitbit and so far I’m not satisfied with the device. 

[Gr4ndp4]

Hi, @Duth17 , welcome to the community, I recommend you check the settings in your Fitbit app on your iPhone, in particular check all permissions are granted and that any battery-saving function on your phone is disabled for the Fitbit app, it needs to run all the time in the background this will impact the SP02 readings and sleep, see this article How do I track my sleep with my Fitbit device? and How do I track blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) with my Fitbit device?  There is a lot of advice at  Re: Tips for Syncing to your iOS device - Page 3 - Fitbit Community which you might find helpful. In respect of your GPS issue, I recommend looking at the GPS settings, from the clock face swipe down to and touch "settings"> swipe up to and touch GPS > toggle to "phone" to use the phone GPS return to the clock face & sync.

I hope this is helpful, please post here again and let us know how you get on.

Cheers

[Duth17]

Many thanks for your response. I’ve read the information you pointed me at and I seem to be doing everything right re sleep and Sp02 tracking. I note that my device doesn’t start registering sleep until after one hour of being still. I’m a restless sleeper who suffers from restless leg syndrome so I can understand the delay in recording my sleep. The charge 5 must be very sensitive. 

the connection between my iPhone and Fitbit is fine and I don’t have the battery saving function turned on. But I did find that my gps was on dynamic so when I switched it phone the gps tracking on my next ride was excellent. I will select the device for gps tracking next ride and see how that goes. 

a new issue has arisen in that I can’t find how to select auto pause for cycling.  It’s really annoying to manually pause and restart mainly because of big hands. All reviews I read indicated that the device had auto pause which I have had  on my garmin devices for years. Your assistance would be most appreciated. 

cheers

Wayne

[Rich_Laue]

Sorry the Charge 5 doesn't have an auto pause for cycling @Duth17 

[Duth17]

Thanks for letting me know. I’m very surprised that such a basic part of cycling or running hasn’t been included.