Not working after being stuck with logo on screen for over 6 hours

[GoldFish]

On Sunday my Charge 5 got stuck on the Logo screen for over 6 hours. The screen then went blank with no response. On getting home I tried to reboot it by pressing the botton on the USB cable three times with a second interval between each press. Apart from a short vibration and the logo screen showing for about 1 second nothing else happened.

I repeated this several times through Monday (yesterday) but nothing new happened. Charge 5 was left plugged into laptop over night and this morning the screen appeared normal showing time and selected stat. It would not however register a heartbeat or steps when worn. There were also no green LEDS flashing underneath. Rebooted it again and for a short time it started to register a heartbeat and steps but this only lasted a few minutes. When working green LEDS did flash.Rebooted again and it started to work properly for a few minutes before failing to read the heartrate or steps again. On taking the Charge 5 off I noticed that the LEDS are now partly flashing red. Heartrate is also now showing when not being worn but screens not frozen.

Only bought Charge 5 in September 2021 and only recently paid for Premium after 6 months free expired. Not happy

[lambda13]

Similar behavior here started about a week ago.  Had to let the battery completely die, as the "restart" procedure failed to fix (i.e. brief black screen, then returns to logo).  Now it's happening every day.  It's hung more than it's actually usable.  Someone please provide a fix!!!

[GoldFish]

Also just realised the battery is draining extremely fast. 100% down to 50% in 10 hours.

[lambda13]

Yes, I had the excessive battery drain was well.  Since my first reply, I talked to customer service.  They had me open my app (I rarely do), and noticed there was a firmware update available.  Watch restart (i.e. push button 3 times) failed and could not connect to my Fitbit app while on the phone with customer service, but I just kept an eye on the watch.  About a half hour later it finished its restart cycle.  I reopened the app, and initiated the firmware update.  That seemed to complete...  Fingers now crossed that the watch doesn't crash again.  NOTE*** I've had the best luck getting the phone to restart by letting it sit until the battery completely dies.  Given the excessive battery draw while in this mode stuck on the Fitbit logo, this should only be a few hours or overnight.  I will update with success/failure results...  I'm really surprised I wasn't led to this via the website?!?!?

[lambda13]

Update:. Watch worked for a day, then went back to the logo screen.  I guess the firmware update didn't fix it after all.

[GoldFish]

I decided to telephone customer support yesterday. They have agreed to replace it as it was still under warranty. The person I spoke to said they could see there were problems with it at their end.

[lambda13]

Another update:  I just spoke to customer service again, and they realized I had an old version of the Fitbit app, so I updated it through the Play store.  So now I supposedly have compatible versions of the app and watch firmware.  I'm going to try this out for a few days.  If it crashes again, I think the only recourse is warranty replacement.  I could easily see this problem stemming from a SW/firmware mismatch not caught in testing, so this could be a plausible fix.  Fingers crossed!

[Hedgecrone]

So did that mean uninstalling the previous app and starting again entering data from scratch or did it carry through previous data? I mean, did you lose everything on the old version of the app?

[lambda13]

I only "updated" through the typical means in the Google Store.  But you have a good point.  All data carried through just fine.  Your phone might be set to automatically update apps, so this step might have occurred seamlessly for you already -- easiest way to know is just go to the Google Store, search for "Fitbit", the typical app should appear.  It will either have a button for "Open" or "Update".  If "Update" does not appear, then you already have the latest version.  If "update" does appear, once you click it the update will start and you can open the app a minute or two later... All done!

I suppose if this doesn't work, the next step would be to delete the app and start completely from scratch!  But let's hope we don't have to do that!

Curious:  Any chance this is your 2nd Fitbit product?  I just realized my old Charge 2 still appears in the app.  I hope that is not confusing it.  If I get another crash, I'm next going to ensure that disappears from the app. 

Good Luck!

Aaron