Fitbit should give me more months of premium for free for doing this normally paid QA work, also saving them tons $$$ in shipping and replacements as that's what the customer service rep wanted me to do.
First the symptoms and inability to restart the device, if you have these symptoms and experiences I have a fix for you:
Here is what happened to me. My device stopped syncing exactly at 3:00:00PM Jan 23rd, 2024. Then the device restart in the pull down menu would not work, it would turn the screen off and the fitbit logo would not appear after 10 seconds as it normally would, instead I would press the left side button and it would "exit the pull down menu" animation clearly didn't accept the button press on restart device confirmation.
Plugging the charge cable in to perform the three button click 1 second apart physical reset did not work. On top of that, the device would not bring up the full screen changing display as it normally would when charging. Sometimes when I plugged it on and off I could swiped up on the home screen to view my stats and it would show a green lightening bolt through the battery icon as if it was charging, so it knows its connected to power to charge (WEIRD). Not only that but normally pressing the button on the charge cable vibrates the device each press, it did not. Plugging into charger would also vibrate, it did not. Something tells me something to do with the datetime and charging status make the code running get stuck in a deadlock.
The fix, but not really "a fix", but got my device to reboot and operate normally again:
Go into swipe down menu and in GPS put device only, brightness to max and set always on display pick always on. This is to put the device into the worst battery drain settings possible. Select a GPS excercise like walking and adjust the display settings to also be always on. Start the exercise and do something else with your life like debate furiously to online videos and go to bed. In the morning your device will have died and turned off. Plug it into the charge cable, it will display fitbit logo and show 1% charging.
After I furiously debated a few videos for like an hour, I stopped my walk excercise and noticed the battery % did not change. That's impossible, so indicated definitely a deadlock on battery status at least. If you have this symptom surprise Fitbit can't help you cause they outsource tech support who follow a outdated/troubleshooting-brainless script and their engineers get paid too much to GAF about customer issues with current "New" products recently launched or to help update scripts. Or so it seems from googling and chatter online.
ALSO NO ONE USES YOUTUBE MUSIC!?... BRING BACK SPOTIFY CONTROLS APP YOU SELFISH MONOPOLY WEASELS OR ATLEAST LET ME SPLIT SCREEN ANDROID OS APP SO I CAN CONTROL WHILE VIEWING HEARTRATE. *fitbit takes feedback and get rid of live heart rate on tiles in opposite direction of customer requests **perfectly lands triple axle facepalm** *
