Not sure what happened to my track exercise function tonight.

[sutherlandws]

Short summary to lead to where I am, as a lot has changed.

1) My Samsung S20 phone display was damaged 2 weeks ago.  Repair was to $$, so I bought an S22 and it arrived last Friday.

2) I had my Galaxy S22 set up by T-Mobile folks on Saturday so I could use it, BUT they were not able to copy my S20 stuff to it (due to the damaged screen). So I downloaded the Fitbit App onto the new S22. I sync'd my Charge 5 to it.

3) I went for my normal 2-hour walk Sunday AM.  When I do this, I long press the Fitbit icon on my phone and select the top menu item as a shortcut to track exercise.  A map appears and, after a few seconds, the map zooms into my location.  NOTE:  It simply tracks the effort.  It does NOT ask me any questions about WHAT exercise I want to do.  I hit 'start'.  I have it set up to audibly tell me my stats every 0.5 miles (time, distance, pace). The tracking function worked as usual, and this is where I WANT it to be again (see below).

4) My Fitbit Charge 5 died on Sunday. The screen started showing the Fitbit logo and resetting every few seconds. I tried to fix to no avail. I had purchased a Charge 6 to use when my 5 died, so I charged it and got it ready to use. I sync'd the Charge 6 to my S22 phone.  All seemed fine. 

5) I was finally able to figure out how to access my S20 phone using DeX from Samsung.  With this feature, I was able to use SmartSwitch to transfer my S20 phone to my S22.  All worked as expected.  

So a lot of changes, but I wanted to set the stage here.

I went on a walk tonight.  I used the same 'long press' of the Fitbit icon on my S22 and 'touch top menu item' and hit 'Start'.  Looked as expected. After about 1.5 miles, the tracking screen disappeared on my phone.  I thought something had stopped the tracking.  So I tried to start it again.  This time, I did the Long Press of the Fitbit Icon and selected the top item, BUT a COMPLETELY different screen appeared.  It asks me to 'choose an exercise' and has 4 icons on the bottom (Run, Walk, etc.). Not sure why this was appearing, I exited an tried again, with the same result.  So I chose 'Walk'.  Suddenly a map appears centered on the West Coast of Africa, then rapidly zooms to my location in Texas.  A countdown timer says 'begin walk in' with a circle countdown. I have NEVER seen this screen before.  When the countdown reaches 0, it starts to track my exercise by showing a line on the map.  The stats show the time and distance below this map.  If I scroll up, I get another entry for 'pace' and the map shrinks.  The map is highly zoomed in on my location and cannot be zoomed in/out.  

So, not sure what was going on, I did my walk.  At the end, I found a way to END this tracking.  I went in my house and got my reading glasses (so I could actually see the App screen) to determine what had changed.  When I awakened my phone from Sleep Mode, I saw a text message stating 'Tracking Exercise'.  I clicked on it and it was the OLD version of the tracking still running in the background.  I was able to stop it as usual (click on pause, which adds another button to the right of the pause one, then LONG PRESS on that new button to select STOP.).  So BOTH tracking packages were running at the SAME TIME.

With both tracking approaches stopped, I tried to start one again using the Long Press of the Fitbit Icon and choosing the top menu item, which says 'Track Exercise'.  Now, it ALWAYS brings me to the screen that shows a map centered on the West African coast, pans to my location, and zooms in on Extreme closeup of my location.  At the bottom of the screen are 4 icons below the text 'Choose an exercise'.  Run, Walk, Hike, Bike.  This is NOT what I want to use.  I never needed to choose an exercise before. All the tracking did was to track my exercise with duration, distance, and average pace.  I cannot seem to figure out how to get back to that older version of tracking exercise.  I KNOW it is on the phone, and was not replaced with an update or with the switch to the Charge 6 because I was able to get it to work with both the new phone AND FitBit tonight.  I just cannot figure out how to get BACK to that approach and not this other tracking approach.  I will NEVER track a Run, Hike, OR Bike, so I never want to have to select the exercise type.

Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but there are a lot of moving pieces here.  Any help would be appreciated.

[sutherlandws]

I may have solved this, but not sure.  I was trying to solve a DIFFERENT issue.  When my phone screen goes to sleep and shuts off, the Fitbit seems to lose access to the GPS.  When I wake the phone up, the current distance suddenly jumps to my position and then does a Linear fit of distance from the last 'known' location when the screen was on, and updates the distances.  Makes for some very FUNKY maps of my exercise. I have had this before, and I tracked this down to a) using Power Saving feature of the Galaxy phone, and a second setting in the FitBit App.  I fixed both of those, then got a message that the App was not sync'd to my device.  I turned off/on the Bluetooth and selected the S6.  I got a message 'an app is required for this'.  So I went to the FitBit App and was able to sync to the S6.  I then TRIED, just for fun, the long press to Start Tracking.  I got my OLD screen back, with a map, a small dropdown to select exercise type (default is Run), which I changed to Walk (the system remembers the last setting, so I NEVER have to change it again), turned on Voice Cues, set the distance for updates to 0.5 miles.  I can START, PAUSE, RESUME, and STOP.  

What I noticed is that this TRACKING screen says Fitbit on the top.  The other one I mentioned above says Google Maps at the bottom of the map. 

NOTE:  When I set up the S6, one option I was asked was if I wanted to move to Google from Fitbit.  I selected 'Yes' and set thing up to my Google account.  

So it appears that there are 2 'Track Exercise' apps/functions on the Fitbit App, one from the older Fitbit approach, one from the new Google approach.  I am not sure WHY it switched, and have no confidence that it won't do that again, or if there is a CONFIG setting I can use to ensure I get the one I want when using the Long Press (of the Fitbit icon on my S22)/Track Exercise option.  

Not sure if that helps, and I am interested in a more concrete fix rather than this somewhat pragmatic (and, I think, a bit lucky) one.