Is the battery replaceable?

[VF31AE3]

Is the Ionic's battery replaceable or is the $300.00 Smartwatch disposable?

Moderator edit: edited title for clarity

[ErickFitbit]

@VF31AE3 There is no need to replace the battery on Ionic as it comes with a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery.

[DramaQueenDiva]

I think it's rechargeable. I was cruising around the Fitbit Store to find out more about the trackers announced today, and I stumbled across it in the "Accessories" section.

[VF31AE3]

@ErickFitbit; @DramaQueenDiva I hear you Erick and I read the specs. Thanks for including them though. However even rechargeable batteries have a finite life to where they will no longer hold a charge and must be replaced. So if the Ionic's battery is rechargeable but not replaceable then when it no longer holds a charge and cannot be replaced, the $300.00 Ionic Smartwatch.....

[Amarsir]

@ErickFitbit wrote:

@VF31AE3 There is no need to replace the battery on Ionic as it comes with a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery.

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I'm sure, like there's no need to replace the battery on my Surge even though the capacity is demonstrably less than half what it was. Some of us would like to think that our purchases will last more than the year that Fitbit's limited warranty implies.

[DrewWA]

The company seems to be tone deaf on customer concerns and I'm not surprised thier response was to post specs about the battery  being rechargeable and ignore the reality rechargable batteries loose capacity over time.  Fitbit makes disposable products. Owners can simply buy a new device in the VERY likely event of a product failure after warranty expiration (probably sooner). The new 2 year extended warranty option gives consumers an opportunity to pay even more for fitbit's poor engineering and design choices. Fitbit is a status symbol that says to the world " I can afford to wear a fitness tracker and throw a couple hundred dollars away" 

[Millerliter]

Or even worse, they get you addicted to a particular device and then discontinue it, leaving you in the dust when they stop supporting the platform.  They are discontinuing the One.  I do not want to wear anything on my wrist nor do I want to use the Company recommended Zip, an inferior tracker.   I would be very wary of purchasing a $300.00 watch  from a Company who has a "too bad for you" attitude when they discontinue your tracker because it has stopped laying golden eggs.  A loyal  Fitbit user since 2011, I thought the company had more scruples than that.   Silly me.

[Digitenor]

I had my Fitbit Surge for 30 months.  It stopped losing its charge arguably around the same time as warranty.

Ive recently had a 25% off coupon offer. There's about 20% of me thinks maybe on this, but OP is right about disposable which is pretty much the garbage I got back from Customer Service when I asked why the Fit Bit was designed to be disposable.

'It's eco friendly blah blah, they must think we swim in batteries and throw them everywhere, everyday'.  Re-charge or not, I'd still probably be replacing a standard battery once every two years, that's more eco friendly than a whole watch + battery!

...and what was your title before the mods censored it?  I've noticed they do that on here incase there's any negative reviews/opinions?

[VF31AE3]

@Digitenor In this case the original title was redundant. It read "Is the Ionic battery replaceable?" But you are right. I was involved in a thread where the Title was removed and the responses put in another Topic where they made no sense!

[TwoBit]

The sad reality is that smartwatches are being sold like smartphones. No manufacture expects nor wants you to keep it for more than 2 years. They want you to regularly upgrade to the latest, greatest and more expensive. The trend to non-replaceable batteries in smartphones started quite a few years ago when the manufactures realized they could make the devices thinner and cheaper by making cases that aren't meant to be opened by the user (i.e. glued together).

The other consideration is that it's entirely reasonable to have a non-replaceable battery in a waterproof device. You can't expect reliable seals on a device that can be opened by the user without making the device much larger and sturdier. Would you want to buy a smartwatch that's 25-50% bigger just in case you needed to replace the battery? I might be willing to put up with a larger phone but certainly not a larger watch.

[Fozzy71]

I don't wear a watch often but when I do the one I have (sold all but one) is a massive Invicta (the others I sold after getting a fitness tracker were pretty big as well) so I would put up with a thicker watch where I wouldn't put up with a fatter phone, even though the phone I have (Pixel XL) is not waterproof and does not have a replaceable battery.  I already replaced my first alta after a year for an alta hr, and replace my phones every 1 - 2 years, I don't want to replace a $300 watch every 1 - 2 years as well (a $100 tracker I can stomach, a $300 watch not so much).  The OS/Firmware is upgradable, the battery should be replaceable.  They make watches for under $100 with replaceable batteries that are water proof far more than 50m.

[VF31AE3]

As a counter point (for discussion) and with all due respect. A sealed unit with a non replaceable battery does not guarantee waterproof / resistant as the Surge is evidence. However. In the name of profit (or greed if you prefer) the battery issue could be like this. Waterproof / resistant to X meters. Rechargeable / replaceable battery*. The asterisk would be "battery replaced by Mfg, waterproof / resistant rating retained & guaranteed. Battery replaced by consumer waterproof / rating not guaranteed." The fixed fee to have the MFG do the work would include the battery and any seal or hardware that may or may not (meaning some watches may require a seal or hardware others may not) need to be replaced. All other aspects of the warranty would remain the same. Maybe a discounted fee (paid at time of purchase) for the fist battery replacement.

Throwing away a perfectly good and functioning device because the battery has reached the end of its life is such a needless waste of material (IMHO). The world is full enough of our junk ( again IMHO) why add to it unnecessarily?

[TwoBit]

@VF31AE3 I don't think we are in disagreement with respect to waterproofing. I'm talking about the impetus for a particular design and you are talking about execution of the design. Any design based on sound reasoning will be for naught if the execution is poor.

I agree 100% that the disposable nature of our high priced electronics is indeed wasteful. The issue with the defective Surge bands is a prime example of this. Fitbit wants us to throw away an otherwise functional device just because they refuse to supply a $10 band. It's like saying you need get a new car when you get flat tire. Some may be happy to get a new replacement under warranty and sing the company's praises but my conscience wouldn't allow it so I refused the free replacement at the time.

It speaks volumes as to the culture within the company and I will never buy the Ironic (spelling intentional) or any another Fitbit product because of this.

[VF31AE3]

@TwoBit I am with you TwoBit!

[Amarsir]

Well, the switch to changeable bands is a good move that shows they do care somewhat about customer wishes. I'm disappointed they didn't go the extra step to replaceable batteries as well. Waterproofing and the need to keep size down are reasonable answers. Just don't act like this isn't something we should care about because "it's rechargeable".

[shipo]

Depending upon how long the battery ultimately lasts, I can see a cottage industry popping up to replace the batteries.  🙂

[PureEvil]

The tech industry as a whole is full of compromises that allow us most of what we want with some caveats.  Two big examples are file formats, both .mp3's and .jpg's are lossy formats.  We use them because, most of the time in the way that we use them, we can't tell the difference and the lossy formats are more convenient.  Can you really tell the difference between the uncompressed .wav file and the .mp3?  Or the uncompressed .bmp image and the .jpg?  Probably not.

Why would I put only ~60 uncompressed audio files on the Ionic, when I can put as many as 300 mp3's?

As for the battery, ultimate battery life goes by recharge cycles.  My Fitbit One lasted over four years before I decided to replace it.  That's a pretty long time.  If you keep in mind that you'd only need to charge the Ionic once every four days (in contrast to most phones which folks charge everyday), means that one year will only be around 90 charge cycles.

While I understand the desire to replace the battery when it no longer holds a charge for a $300 device.  Why aren't there more folks screaming about this with the likes of an $750 iPhone 7?  You can't replace the battery on that device either...  Does the lack of a replaceable battery make it disposable?

If you want this trend changed, then you can talk with your wallet.  Stop buying products from companies that manufacture devices without replaceable batteries.  While this includes Fitbit, it also includes Apple and Samsung.

[shipo]

@PureEvil, "lossy"?  I don't understand that word in the context in which you're using it.  Are you saying "lousy" as in poor or inferior, or "lossy" as in high degree of loss?

[PureEvil]

@shipo,

You can read more about both MP3 and JPG formats.  Note how they're both described as lossy compression.

Really, any degree of loss is considered lossy.  This means that if you took the original image (each individual 24/32 bit pixel, frequently a .bmp file) and converted it into a .jpg, you can never get the original image back.  You can probably get something pretty close, even to the point where you can't tell the difference with your naked eye, but it's still not the original.  Hence the term 'lossy'.  The same is true about mp3's.

Both of these formats effectively work by removing elements that you're not likely to notice (see or hear, respectively), which is why they're typically a good compromise.  A typical uncompressed music file is normally around 40MB, the same mp3 is about 10% of its size.  We normally use mp3's because we want to fit more music on the same amount of storage.

This is in contrast to a lossless compression format, like ZIP files, which need to give you back your data bit-by-bit.

[TwoBit]

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@PureEvil wrote:

...

Why aren't there more folks screaming about this with the likes of an $750 iPhone 7?  You can't replace the battery on that device either...  Does the lack of a replaceable battery make it disposable?
...
If you want this trend changed, then you can talk with your wallet.  Stop buying products from companies that manufacture devices without replaceable batteries.

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So true. If you read the smartphone forums and news article comments there are plenty of people complaining about non-replaceable batteries and lack of memory expansion slots. Unfortunately many of those same complainers go out and buy the new phones anyway because they've been conditioned to always want the latest and greatest model.

At least with most phones there is a possibility of replacing batteries and screens even if the devices are sealed. I've done quite a few to keep an older model going for another year or two. I'm not sure if I can work on something as small as a smartwatch, assuming that I can even get parts.