New Ionic stopped pairing after 2 days, won't reconnect

[dwizum]

I've read (most of) the gigantic "RESOLVED: pairing issues" thread. Brand new Ionic, with Android phone (Oneplus phone with up to date OS, all patches etc.) My Ionic worked fine at first but now won't pair and I'm at a dead end in terms of what to do (except return it, I guess).

Got the watch for Christmas. On Christmas day, I paired my Ionic, things seemed fine. Did the firmware update, installed fitbit app, created account, everything seemed OK. Didn't really fiddle with the watch or phone after that, it was sync'ing correctly, I was getting notifications on the watch, etc. No issues.

This morning, I looked at the app on the phone to check my sleep info, and it said it hadn't synced since 5PM the night before. 

I've done everything I can think of to get it to resync. Reset the watch several times, deleted the app and all bluetooth connections from my phone (including my car, headphones, etc to make sure there was no interference), Turned off all other nearby bluetooth devices, restarted bluetooth on my phone, restarted the phone, removed the Ionic from my fitbit account, turned everything off and back on again, factory reset the Ionic, etc. and so on.

Every time, without fail, when I try to add the Ionic back in via the app, it finds the Ionic, prompts me for the 4 digit code, and then the process stalls after I enter the code. It never makes it past that step, it just times out and prompts me to try again.

I'm beyond frustrated, this is a cool watch and I'm eager to use it. Right now it's a paperweight. Not a very good first impression of Fitbit for me.

[Mina-JS]

I have a simular issue, though the steps and activity register in the app, it still says I haven't synced since yesterday and my steps aren't updated for challenges or on the leaderboard (or on my hourly activities).

I have to remove the Ionic from the app and re-register it to sync, which is annoying at best.  

[SunsetRunner]

Next time you guys have sync problems, double check that you have a good internet signal.  I have spotty cell service in my office building and never can sync when the signal is low, because the Fitbit app has to phone home to sync.  If it can't talk to the servers, the sync WILL fail.  Haven't had a problem in the week I've had my Ionic, except for when I had a weak signal.  If I have LTE, or I'm on wifi, I don't have an issue.

For reference, I'm on a Moto Z Play and Android 7.1.

[dwizum]

Interesting.

My issues have happened while at my house (no cell signal but strong reliable wifi), my girlfriend's apartment (strong 4g lte and strong wifi), and work (no wifi but strong 4g lte).

I don't think I'm seeing a pattern of bad internet resulting in poor sync'ing but it's definitely worth checking.

Sad that I basically have three versions of fitbit data that aren't in sync. There's what's on the Ionic itself, which doesn't always completely sync to the phone app per this thread. And if I compare the phone app to my web dashboard, there are huge differences on some days, too.

[Daybee8]

I am still able to sync. If it doesn't,  I manually do it by pressing the Sync now on the app and it has been working fine. I am going on four days now I think. My Samsung S7 did an update so maybe that fixed It?

All I know is, I hope it keeps working.

[dwizum]

I posted an update in this thread but the post has apparently disappeared. Was it deleted?

[dwizum]

Wherever my post went, I was able to dig it out of my own browser history:

Shortly after my last post, I talked to my girlfriend (who had given me the watch for Christmas in an attempt to get me into the fitbit community) about wanting to return it and switch to a Garmin watch. She shared my concern that it would be a shame for her and I to be on different brands. Plus, she gave my daughter a more basic fitbit, so I'd be on a different platform from both of them, which would be a shame.

She then had a great idea, as a temporary test - she gave me her Alta and took my Ionic. This way, we'd know if it was my phone or something else about me causing the issues. She has a Samsung Galaxy S8+ and has used various fitbits for years and years, she's totally bought in and has never had any issues. I think she was truly convinced that this was all somehow my fault, or I was just being whiny or something! I removed the Ionic from my fitbit app, disassociated from my bluetooth, and helped her do a factory reset and attach it to her phone. I could see it in her face that she was already a little disappointed, as the firmware update failed three or four times partway through and it took maybe 2 hours to finally get it up and running. This was all over a rock solid wifi network with pretty much zero other traffic.

But once up and running, she was excited to play with it and see all the cool features, and within minutes she was trying to talk me in to keeping her Alta so she could keep the Ionic. I told her that was fine, I'd lost interest in the Ionic. I don't particularly like the Alta but it's something, I guess. Minutes later, our first (weird) issue. It suddenly claimed she had 9,210 steps. We hadn't even gotten up from the sofa! Anyways, we went on with our day. She kept talking about how much she liked it, all evening.

This morning, I got a single sentence from her. "This thing is going back."

It last synced at 10 PM last night and she's been fiddling with it all morning with no success. Same symptoms as me. It would show steps, heart rate, etc in the app but it would claim the sync failed and wouldn't show sleep data and wouldn't allow apps or watch faces to be updated.

Goodbye, Ionic community. And good luck.

[Daybee8]

@dwizum - could those steps have been carried over from her Alta?  The steps she did that day?  I'm sorry to hear you are both having such issues with your Ionic.  Mine is still working and I don't know why.  I have the S7 so not sure why the S8 wouldn't be working with it.  Maybe before you return it, have her check for a system update on her phone.  Mine did a ton of updates the other day.

[dwizum]

She'd only had a few thousand steps on her Alta. Who knows. 

We did check for updates on her phone first, both for Android and for the fitbit app. Everything was up to date. Same as my phone through all this. 

[dwizum]

It eventually started syncing for her later in the day. I bought a Charge 2 last night and am happy with it so far. She's still trying to decide to keep the Ionic or not. If she does, I'll probably stay active here to help her troubleshoot any issues.

[PeteG-1]

@dwizumI started seeing this too (mostly posting follow-up in the HUGE sync thread), and now I can only sync if I reset the app, disable Bluetooth in PC bios, reboot, reboot again (re-enable BIOS BT this time), and reboot the Ionic too.

This gives me a one(1) time connection, which means I can't ever sync any actual exercise progress.
Not to mention, it's not a small process, and if you can't actually sync any data, well, what's the point?

Meanwhile (as a control), my old Charge2 will connect, disconnect, sync, whatever, so clearly my Bluetooth stack drivers are working.  Also tested a couple of audio devices, and those work flawlessly too.

My issue seemed to coincide with the 2.29 update to the Windows Store app, so I'm currently trying to see if there's a mirror site, somewhere, anywhere, that looks trust-able (to get back to 2.28, to test).

This was my 3rd Fitbit device, but I'm starting to look into what else is out there, that's not a small fortune (and looking into returning my XMas gift, the Ionic), and has a similar feature-set.

I'll probably end up just returning the Ionic for credit, and waiting awhile, to see what happens.

I left a "not so glowing" review (but an honest one) on the store site my wife purchased from, and noticed that the number of these is "dragging down" their rating there.

[PeteG-1]

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@PeteG-1 wrote:

@dwizumI started seeing this too (mostly posting follow-up in the HUGE sync thread), and now I can only sync if I reset the app, disable Bluetooth in PC bios, reboot, reboot again (re-enable BIOS BT this time), and reboot the Ionic too.

This gives me a one(1) time connection, which means I can't ever sync any actual exercise progress.
Not to mention, it's not a small process, and if you can't actually sync any data, well, what's the point?

Meanwhile (as a control), my old Charge2 will connect, disconnect, sync, whatever, so clearly my Bluetooth stack drivers are working.  Also tested a couple of audio devices, and those work flawlessly too.

My issue seemed to coincide with the 2.29 update to the Windows Store app, so I'm currently trying to see if there's a mirror site, somewhere, anywhere, that looks trust-able (to get back to 2.28, to test).

This was my 3rd Fitbit device, but I'm starting to look into what else is out there, that's not a small fortune (and looking into returning my XMas gift, the Ionic), and has a similar feature-set.

I'll probably end up just returning the Ionic for credit, and waiting awhile, to see what happens.

I left a "not so glowing" review (but an honest one) on the store site my wife purchased from, and noticed that the number of these is "dragging down" their rating there.

---

Yeah, so I chatted with a CS rep, again.

Same deal, walked through all the scripts, including another Factory Reset.

Now, my Ionic won't even connect at all, it's sitting at the "setup screen", and my PC will pair to it, but the app (v.22.9) won't talk to it, no way, no how.  I tried two other Bluetooth dongles as well, so now I have a 5.0 (motherboard), a 4.1 and 4.0 dongle test, and none will pair fully, the app won't connect, even though my PC will, partially (because the app won't finish the secure pairing).

No luck, she wouldn't or couldn't point me to a mirror or similar, to download the 22.8 app version, to test things out.

All during these test variations, I was able to pair the Charge2, without issue, it "just worked", as it should.

The CS agent basically told me I was hosed, unless I wanted to move to a purely mobile solution (which I can't do with my mobile device, for security reasons, I'd have to get another, secondary), or wait to see if the PC one (ever) gets fixed for the Ionic pairing.  It's been about 10 weeks since the last update, so no I don't think I'll wait.  From where I sit, Fitbit isn't very interested in keeping customers, or at least those with the new Ionic.

[LaszloPrekop]

Hey @dwizum and @PeteG-1, I just wanted to thank you for all your posts, reading them trough and following some steps you described atfer 3 miserable weeks I finally had the first successful sync between my Ionic and my Oneplus 2!  It's not reliable though, but I've learned a lot from your discussion and now I understand the success/fail situation better. Thanks for all the useful information you shared with us, I wish if only a Fitbit dev would stop by and give some pointers about what to avoid and how to choose a Fitbit-safe phone/tablet/BT module/chipset etc.

[TopCoug]

The key step was forgetting the previous ionic Bluetooth pairing in Android Bluetoith settings.  Then the setup proceeded normally.  Thank goodness.