I too have a fitbit ionic that died, however, i'm one of the fortunate few that it resurrected, which means i have a zombie watch right now. And the watch is not without the usual issues, mainly in the connecting department. For a few months, connecting to the phone was problematic, but at least it did manage to connect at some point during the day. Until last week where it started to refuse to connect. And after trying to connect it to several different devices, including my computer, none could detect a signal coming from the watch even though they were detecting signals from other devices in the house.
There were no software or firmware updates on any devices, so that isn't the culprit. The fact that it was working just fine on the software and firmware versions that I currently have, to update the firmware, the app software, and/or the phone software is NOT a fix, and should not be recommended to people as it would just cause more issues. Better to fix on the versions that it was originally working on when the watch borked itself BEFORE changing any software and firmware is the smarter way to go. Besides, updating the firmware on a watch that is not syncing or turning on is pretty much a useless en devour, mainly because you can't.
After reading through many a thread and my own experiences with my Ionic, the most common denominator to the problems that the people are seeing is the watch, and in many cases, the watch still operates, just won't sync. The problems are consistent across several different platforms and different versions of operating systems as well as different versions of apps and firmware and the problems remain in those cases where software and/or firmware are updated, which is just more proof that updating your software and/or firmware is NOT in any way a fix and should not be recommended as such.
Which brings me to the conclusion that the bluetooth radios used in the watches are of an inferior quality than those seen in previous models like the Blaze, which I had one that worked flawlessly until the battery went bad, which seemed to be a thing for those watches. Bad bluetooth radios could also be what is causing the other issue of the watches suddenly no longer turning on. Possibly a loose connection between the watch and bluetooth radio module might be the problem.
Right now, after almost a year of using the watch, the only fix that I can see is, you guessed it, a replacement. With the inferior quality of parts being used in the watches as well as the lackluster support that tries to sell you a new watch instead of doing the right thing and sending a replacement, I will be replacing my Ionic with a different brand, mainly Garmin.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
