Ionic battery drains while powered off

[jonnyweave]

Hello all, 

I've been told by Fitbit that I am the only one that is experiencing this problem, so want to see if there are others.  My fitbit Ionic has an excessive battery drain only when powered off.  Can lose 30-40% overnight when powered off.  If left on, it may only lose 5%. Also, it gets stuck on the day and steps before and only updates to the correct day after syncing.  This has only been a problem since the last firmware update.  Fitbit sent me a new fitbit Ionic which worked normally until I updated it to this new firmware (70.7.14).  So two devices both working normally before the update and defectively after, I suspect a problem in the update.  Anyone else having this problem with their Ionics (or any other fitbit smart device for that matter)? I found a forum of Versa's with the same problem (https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Versa-Smartwatches/Versa-s-battery-drains-while-powered-off/m-p/3947...) so it doesn't seem to be an isolated thing.  Thanks!

[SilviaFitbit]

@jonnyweave Welcome to the Community. Sorry for the delayed reply. 

I appreciate the research done prior to posting. Thanks for the detailed information shared about your Ionic draining the battery when you turned it off. 

Thanks for your report, this is being investigated by our Fitbit team, because as you mentioned this started happening after the latest firmware update. 

Your patience and understanding is appreciated. I'll be around if you have any additional questions. 

[SunsetRunner · Accepted solution]

The problem is that with this firmware the watch doesn't actually power off. The screen goes black, but it goes into a high-CPU lockup that drains the battery. The only way to recover is the "three finger salute" to hard-reboot the watch.

Here is the only solution: Just don't power it off. Let it run.

Fitbit support knows about this - there are many hundreds of identical complaints on this forum. But they can't admit it because they would have to admit their firmware is the problem and they'd be admitting liability.

And they refuse to release any more firmware updates. They said this on 2/5/2020 in the final update to the firmware discussion pinned at the top of this message board.

[jonnyweave]

Thanks for this information.  Your explanation does make the most sense, and I submitted a similar guess to tech support but it was ignored, so I guess we will have to wait and hope they make a further update in the future that will fix the problem.  

[Binderbagel]

I have a fitbit versa and I have noticed the exact same thing. It isn't just you. I was completely surprised that I was draining the battery so quickly after it being turned off all night. It shouldn't loose any battery. But I noticed that it had the same date and step count as the night prior. So I will just leave it on at night from now on. Thanks for your post. It helps knowing I'm not the only one.

[jonnyweave]

Thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only one!  Hopefully Fitbit will take this seriously and fix it!

[Binderbagel]

My battery also drains faster even if I leave the device on and I dont turn it off  I was charging my device once a week. Now I get 2 days max if I'm lucky. Are you seeing this too?

[jonnyweave]

@Binderbagel I haven't noticed a significant change when it's powered on, but it does seem to drain faster during workouts than it used to.  With 1-2 workouts I will still get about 4 days out of it as long as I don't power it down.  It is only a couple of months old though, so hasn't had as many battery cycles yet.  

[abutrug]

same here. the last eight days it went from  4-5 days charge down to a few hours. this happened overnight. batteries dont do that. ive seen many other complaints about the same problem. cant believe the incompetence. if this is one of those pre programmed things, meaning its programmed to reduce battery life, ill buy a garmin and write bad things about fitbit.

[jonnyweave]

Hi All, just as an update, I've downloaded the update 27.70.7.27.  No change with the power-off battery drain issue, but now my Ionic does seem to loose time if I don't sync for several days.  This is new for my device since this update, I've seen others have already had this problem, but wondering if anyone has now experienced it with this update?

[Rollie20033]

Its totally ridiculous how I fully charge my Ionic,  to 100%.

Then go to settings on the device, 

Then to about, and scroll all the way down  to shutdown,  

Confirm I want to shut down 

It goes down.  

I am trying to conserve power, 

While I am using my new Garmin Device.  

The Ionic is down day 1

I touch the back button day 2 still down, 

Then day 3, I want to compare my sleep to the garmin.  But I touch the back button  now shows 0% charge. 3 days of doing ABSOLUTELY nothing,  and it's dead

Disgusted again at the Fitbit device. 

Rollie20033 a Fitbit user,  on occasion 

[abutrug]

I found out that the problem was the watch face. it was called pip boy 3000. after that my batttery lasts 3 days. which is not great. im sure i got 5 days out of it. I also have another huge problem with the buttons pushing by itself. I had to take off fitpay because it was locking me out of the watch 50 times a day.