Ionic is always dim with Auto brightness

[MrRoy]

Is anyone else having this issue with the Ionic?  This started happening on this past Sunday. It stays dim, no matter what the the ambient lighting is.  Outside, in daylight, the Ionic is unusable at that setting.

Thanks,

Roy

[SilviaFitbit]

@MrRoy It's nice to see you on the Community. Thanks for taking the time to share what you're experiencing with your Ionic. 

I would like you to try restarting your Ionic and adjust your screen brightness from your quick settings to normal and then change it back to auto. After this, test it out and check if the Ionic's screen adjusts. 

Keep me posted. I'll be around if you have any additional questions. 

[MrRoy]

Hello SilviaFitbit,

I did all that was mentioned in your post but the problem still exists.  I don't know if it is an issue with the firmware update or not.  Just before the update, the screen was dimmed and touchscreen was not responsive.  Then my ionic would randomly restart and would get stuck at the logo.  I was able to get the to main screen, settings, then factory reset. After it was reset, I saw that there was a firmware update, which I completed.After a couple of restarts, it stopped getting stuck at the logo and is working fine with the exception of the auto brightness issue.  

Please advise.

Thanks,

Roy

[Bettid]

My ionic does this every other month. I have to reset it to get the brightness back. Today I couldn’t see any screen but tried a reset after fully charging and lights came back. 

[SilviaFitbit]

@MrRoy Thanks for getting back. I appreciate that you mentioned that after restarting it stopped showing the Fitbit logo but the brightness hasn't been fixed. In this case, I've shared your post with our Support team and they will continue assisting you through email. 

@Bettid It's nice to see you on the Community. Thanks for letting me know that after you restarted your watch, it started showing lights again. 

I'll be around if you have any additional questions. 

[Dennan]

It's interesting to me that Roy described his issue with the auto dimming feature on his Ionic exactly one year ago today. I've had my second Ionic for roughly a year now and his post is describing the exact problem that I woke up to this morning. I have my sleep mode set to turn off at the same time that I get up to run in the morning. It did and still does show that sleep mode is off. However, this morning my Ionic just stayed dim no matter what I did. After my run I played around with the brightness settings. I can set it to any brightness level and it stays there. However, whenever it dims in the auto mode it will just stay dim unless I restart it again as you asked Roy to do. I tried restarting my Ionic by pressing the left and bottom right buttons, which did reset it and show the Fitbit logo before coming back to life. I then adjusted my screen brightness to normal and it did look normal. I changed it back to auto and it appeared to look OK. I put my arm in the dark under my desk and it did go dim. However, even when I brought it back out and put right next to my bright desk light I couldn't get it to go bright any brighter than dim. The only way to get the brightness back is to manually change the brightness level and restart it again. I can leave it in normal brightness mode for now but I do like the auto feature and wish that it would work as it's supposed to. Just for the sake of discussion I did manually switch it to sleep mode with the brightness level at normal just now and it did go dim. When I manually turned off sleep mode it did go back to normal brightness so this hopefully is a good sign that my programmed sleep mode will work the way it is supposed to. I believe the last update to my Ionic was several weeks ago so that shouldn't be my issue. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dennan

[SilviaFitbit]

@Dennan Hi there. Thank you for sharing detailed information about this. 

I appreciate that you described that the Ionic's brightness fixes only when it's restarted. In this case, please perform a factory reset, take into consideration that it will remove apps, stored data, personal information, credit and debit cards and saved settings.

On your device, open the Settings app > About > Factory Reset.

Hope this helps. 

[Dennan]

A factory reset did nothing to change the issue I'm having. Once my Ionic
dims in the automatic brightness setting the only way to make it brighter
again is still to change the setting back to normal brightness, and then
restart it. Over the weekend it also started randomly showing only the
Fitbit icon on the screen, and the only way that I could get that to go
away was to restart my Ionic by holding the left and bottom right buttons.
It did that about 3 times over the past few days so I'm not sure what that
was or if it will continue now that I've done the factory reset.

[Dennan]

The brightness issue is still not fixed but that is only slightly annoying at this point. However, this new thing that has now started with my Ionic locking up with the Fitbit icon on my screen is REALLY becoming a headache quickly. It does it at the most random times and it's happening more and more frequently each day. It is now regularly doing this when I get up most mornings. I'm not sure if it has something to do with my scheduled sleep mode that turns off at the same time I get up or not, but it does it at other times as well. In a matter of 5 hours this morning it has happened twice and it is getting harder and harder to get it to unfreeze and start working again. This morning it took three restart attempts to unlock it, and just moments ago I had to try restarting it about 8-10 times before it would finally start working again. I found my receipt from Verizon and I just bought this thing in June. Being only 9 months old and as much as it cost I should not be having these kind of issues. Do you think this is something that I can remedy on my own or is there something wrong with this thing that I need to discuss directly with Fitbit?

[SilviaFitbit]

@Dennan Thank you for the pictures attached and the detailed information shared. 

I appreciate the restart performed and the fact that you found the receipt. The best way to get help for this problem is to chat with us online or give us a call. Click here to get connected. 

Have a good rest of the week.