Crashes during exercise

[BMCG]

10/3 morning run, tracking with GPS, looked at watch at mile 2,

checked a couple minutes later and it was the workout screen where you scroll to choose exercise. So I restarted “run” and went home. Synced to phone, 2+mile run is not there, was never recorded, didn’t sync. This is a MAJOR  reason for buying a gps tracker, it must work every time.  

Other problems-

finally got pandora stations to show up when I forced sync for 15th time on work WiFi, got Home put watch on charger, Home WiFi, pandora station and disappeared!!!! Fitbit Please fix software! Will Ben returning off not fixed in next couple weeks for refund. 

I was excited aboit Ionic becuase I like fitbit, battery life vs Apple Watch, and combined the function of my old gps running watch and all day tracker. But it was released with too many problems.  Please post update on firmware fixes that may be in the future. 

Moderator edit: edited title for clarity & format

[Dinobean]

I have had issues pretty much since I got my watch, so Fitbit being aware doesn't fill me with confidence.

As I have said before, I am extremely dissspointed in both the watch and the response to issues.

I do not mean to sound snarky here, but I do not wish to log activities manually, as I spent £250 for my watch to do it!

I am using so few features I might as well be using a Charge HR.

I have now purchased a 645M and will be joining the Garmin folks. Once it arrives I will let you know what it is like!

[PaulHaines]

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@Dinobean wrote:

I have had issues pretty much since I got my watch, so Fitbit being aware doesn't fill me with confidence.

As I have said before, I am extremely dissspointed in both the watch and the response to issues.

I do not mean to sound snarky here, but I do not wish to log activities manually, as I spent £250 for my watch to do it!

I am using so few features I might as well be using a Charge HR.

I have now purchased a 645M and will be joining the Garmin folks. Once it arrives I will let you know what it is like!

---

@SantiR Yet another Ionic owner abandoning Fitbit and going to Garmin.      Ironically I had a Garmin before, had no issues at all, and moved to an Ionic as I liked the design, notification and fitness modes.   Guess what - notifications didn't work and it took 4 months and 4 updates until Fitbit fixed it, and the activity tracking crashes almost every time I go on one.    Living in Asia, we don't share the luxury of consumer rights that folks in the USA or Europe do, so have spent $350 on a lemon.    We need you guys to fix this

[MarreFitbit]

Hi everyone! We totally understand where your concerns are coming from. We don't want to create frustration in our customers. Fitbit has been designed to provide motivation and help you to reach your daily goals to success. Please know that we provide feedback to our team based on community posts and we are always working on improving our devices and overall environment based on that feedback.

As mentioned through this thread, our Fitbit team is aware of the problem and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. 

In the meantime, you can manually log your activities for you to not loose any credit. 

We understand that this isn't the resolution you're hoping for, but rest assured we're always working to improve our products.

We're sorry for any trouble. We appreciate your patience and look forward to getting you back on track.

[fkimura]

MarreFitbit, what credits are you talking about? 

"In the meantime, you can manually log your activities for you to not loose any credit. "

[GySgt_Seidell]

Hello @fkimura!  I believe the “Credit” that @MarreFitbit referenced to in her fantastic posting was regarding Manual Logging, so that all of your hard earned effort is properly “Credited” to your Fitbit account. 

Hope this helped and Keep on STEPPING!

[SunsetRunner]

Manual logging overrides calories as it doesn't take into account HR during logged time period. In other words it's useless. It happened to me several times but usually when being few minutes in so restarting exercise wasn't a big loss. Recently, it crashed after one hour so I lost pretty much whole workout ( restarting it didn't make much sense for few minutes of cooldown ). This issue hasn't been fixed for very long time. Aren't crash issues priority to be fixed for Fitbit? In my experience, whatever software I work on, crashes and other stability issues are number one to address by developers.

[MarreFitbit]

Thanks for jumping in here @SunsetRunner! Typically, your data will be recalculated if you manually log an activity as the manually logged activity takes precedence over the data you tracked while wearing your tracker at that point in time. For example, if I am wearing my tracker and walking and I reach 10,000 steps, then I go to the computer and manually log an activity that starts and ends at that point in time for say 1 hour, Fitbit will calculate how many steps you took and it may bring my step count to something below 10,000 steps. 

For trackers that support heart rate monitoring, you would probably only want to log an activity manually if you forgot to wear your tracker or forgot to track the exercise. These trackers take heart rate into account when calculating calories burned, so even if an activity doesn't count steps, you still get calorie count information. 

Note that when you manually log an activity, its step and calorie data override the data automatically detected by your tracker during the same time period. This ensures that your steps are not counted twice as long as the manually logged activity has the correct start time and duration. 

We'll continue to monitor the situation, and keep our team informed of the impact to you and other customers. We understand that this isn't the resolution you're hoping for, but rest assured we're always working to improve our products and services.

We're sorry for any trouble. We appreciate your patience and look forward to getting you back on track.

[LazW]

My Ionic did exactly the same today. After around 6 miles I was notified I had reached my step target but then, when I next checked, it was ready to start exercise tracking. The gps tracked 6-mile run had completely disappeared, no log, no trace - as if it never existed. Only the number of steps were recorded. As previously stated, this should be a priority issue to resolve - its the main reason people buy expensive gps enabled fitness watches!

Update: I restarted the Ionic and a little while later the full run appeared in the Fitbit app and auto-transferred to Strava. Very glad it wasn't lost.

[MarreFitbit]

Thanks for jumping in here @LazW! I'm glad to hear that your run appeared after restarting your Fitbit Ionic. Thanks for letting us know what worked for you. 

Let me know if there's anything else I may assist you with. 

[runnerboi418]

“Let me know if there's anything else I may assist you with.”

How about you guys fix these problems that have been plaguing this device since the beginning?!?

BEK

[MarreFitbit]

Thanks for stopping by @runnerboi418! I totally understand where your concern is coming from. We'll continue to monitor the situation, and keep our team informed of the impact to you and other customers. We understand that this isn't the resolution you're hoping for, but rest assured our team is working for a fix.

We're sorry for any trouble. We appreciate your patience and look forward to getting you back on track.

[CoLFC]

Anyone having this issue,

I've had my ionic for about 7 months and just recently it has started resetting itself in the middle of my runs which causes it to lose the data for the run up to the point where it resets itself. Today it did it once  roughly about 4k into an 8k run but I've had worse where it just completely crashed and didn't record any of a 13k run except about maybe 1k which it auto recognized just before I reached home.

It's just not acceptable when I am using the fitbit to target distances and trying for PR's on shorter runs.

I've tried all the usual crap with trouble shooting, resetting the device and deleting the app and starting from fresh, I've also tried a workaround that I saw posted on another thread about turning off all notifications, all of which obviously have not stopped the device from resetting itself...

[Graciemt]

I’m a year late but this happens to me. Not even an hour in, this happens half a minute into my workout and then continues to happen and won’t sync any of the excersize. So frustrating. 

[Popsikill]

This happened to me again yesterday - (Fitbit Ionic) Treadmill mode crashed 5 minutes in, noticed after my run that it hadn't been recording it.

Nothing more infuriating than buying a device for the sole purpose of monitoring your fitness and it can't even do that consistently - i'll be steering away from the Fitbit environment in my next purchase.

[runnerboi418]

Earlier on this thread, one of the posters (@sfrider) shared some "voodoo" that works for him and has worked for me ...

The "crash" (exiting the exercise app and going to the watch face) that affects me seems to happen at the first auto-lap point (wherever you have it set to ... 0.5 miles, 1.0 miles, 2 minutes, etc.).  I have had it happen both on the treadmill and on outside GPS runs.

The "voodoo" is to interact with the display (e.g. swipe once or twice twice) after you start the workout, but before you reach your first auto lap point.  I used to have this crash about every other run, but since I started doing this a couple of months or so ago, it has not happened (knock on wood).

I know from other posters that they have issues that are unrelated to their auto-lap points, so it's obviously not a cure-all, but it appears to help with this one symptom, at least.

BEK

[MarreFitbit]

Hi there @Graciemt and @Popsikill! Sorry to hear you're also experiencing this crash inconvenience. What my friend @runnerboi418 has provided is a workaround that has worked for some users in this thread. Can you please give it a try and let me know if that works for you? 

We understand that this isn't the resolution you're hoping for, but rest assured we're always working to improve our products.

We're sorry for any trouble. We appreciate your patience and look forward to getting you back on track.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[fkimura]

Dear @MarreFitbit, I really need to correct you, please.

You should not work to "improve" your product, but really "FIX the bug!!!"

Thank you.

[MarreFitbit]

Hi @fkimura! Thank you for the thorough feedback for the Fitbit environment, customer service and devices. This has not gone unnoticed and be sure that I will pass this along.

We don't want to create frustration in our customers. Fitbit has been designed to provide motivation and help you to reach your daily goals to success. Please know that we provide feedback to our team based on community posts and we are always working on improving our devices and overall environment based on that feedback.

If there's any questions present, let me know.

[Dinobean]

So I gave my Ionic away. £250 wasted to be quite honest, and I will not be coming back to fitbit. I wasn't confident it worked well enough to re-sell. And I was right. It crashed multiple times in the first few days this person had it.

I now have a Garmin and I am very happy with it. No problems / workarounds / restarts whatsoever.

I wanted to provide this feedback so you understand that a critical issue such as this, and the response to it, will drive customers away. 

I hope it gets sorted.

[MarreFitbit]

I appreciate you've taken the time to give your feedback @Dinobean. Sorry to hear you go! 

Rest assured that our engineers and product development team use this information to further improve our products and services which lead us to release new Fitbit trackers. 

As I've mentioned above, please know that we provide feedback to our team based on community posts and we are always working on improving our devices and overall environment based on that feedback. 

I'll be around if you have any questions.