Badges Missing

[cabouma]

Hello - 

I just wanted to share my thoughts and concerns on a common issue that I've been seeing throughout the forums. First, I wanted to express that I'm a little disappointed that on days where I have completed well over 15,000 steps that I am not receiving additional badges reflecting this. I have seen other posts saying that steps you log from a workout (or whatnot) does not get considered for badges. Has this been the confirmed answer from fitbit IT? If so, I'm just wondering the logic behind this? It makes the UX a little frustrating... Because if this is the case then there is no way to know how many steps you actually "get"...

[PureEvil]

Hello @cabouma,

Welcome to the community!

Well, the answer is yes and no, but allow me to explain...

A few months ago, Fitbit changed the dashboard.  I won't go into the details, but one of the changes was that the older dashboard listed all the badges you got that day.  So if your step count is 15.5k, it would list the 5k, 10k, and 15k step badges.  While you still collect the badges, and you can see that if you hover over each one, you don't see which ones you collected on your dashboard.  This led people to believe that they're not collecting the badges anymore.  They are; they just don't see it unless they look for it.

There are two ways that you can log an activity with the Flex:

1. Tap it repetitively to enter activity mode; it'll buzz.  Work out.  Repeat to exit.  Once you sync, you'll see a generic entry for your workout and you can rename it (like 'afternoon walk').
2. Manually go to your activites page and enter an activity, such as 'Walk, 30 min, 2 miles'.

#1 above will still count your steps during that activity towards a badge (say if you did that during an aerobics class) because your Fitbit knows that you participated in that activity.

#2 above will not count your steps during that activity towards a badge, because you can claim whatever you want, and it wasn't measured by Fitbit.

Sadly, folks will get very competitive especially during challenges and otherwise there'd be nothing stopping someone from manually entering 20,000 steps in 30 minutes to win the challenge.

I hope this helps.

[spil030]

Thanks Frank for that explanation. What happens if your fitbit dies during an activity? I went for a hike last week and after 8 hours or so of running the GPS in my device, the battery ran out. My phone was also calculating steps, and put me at just over 51,000 steps for the day, but the fitbit only counted 44,960 or so, so won't give me the 45K or 50K step badges. Based on your explanation, I can see why, but is there a way to prevent this in future? Since the phone did measure the steps, just not the fitbit.