@Daybee8 wrote:
You all have lost me. I just want this thing to work. It actually was working pretty much all day (except I had to turn the bluetooth off a couple times and then it would work) but now I can't get it to sync to save my life.
I just bought a Samsung Galaxy S7 - I can't believe this thing would not have the BLE you are all talking about. I have two other things connected to my bluetooth. I may try unpairing them to see if it will start working. However, I use the other two things that are connected daily so not sure that will be of any help.
How can FB not know this is happening?
@Daybee8 Have you tried resetting just your network-stack? It's under Settings->Backup&Reset (on most Android, but it should be pretty easy to find), it's usually denoted as "Network Settings Reset".
This resets ALL the radio stacks, WiFi, Cellular, Bluetooth, NFC, the works. You do have to reconnect and re-pair things after, but if you have a latent network issue, it can help (and it's much easier than a full factory reset). When I do a "network reset", I also do a "system cache reset", you can search on that phrase and there'll be a bunch of videos, it's a pre-boot Android thing, and relatively easy once you see the video.
The problem with the S7, or any other high-volume, carrier-customized device, is that there are a TON of variants. Samsung made 3 (4 if you count the note, which is gone now, the recall), including the Active. Then they have some sub-variants, with various bands, for the carriers, mostly.
From here, each carrier modified those, which can amount to tweaking the cell radio, and much much more (bloat, tweaks for linkage into their apps, you name it). Some will tweak Bluetooth and WiFi too, to make it work better with their wearables (the ones they sell/profit from).
At this point, with a few basic carriers, we're talking 50-75 variants, possibly more. There are other permutations, but this probably paints enough of the picture.
So, say your Fitbit tester gets an unlocked S7, and maybe one each, from high-market-share carriers, and a couple of others, maybe 5-10, depending on their lab layout.
Remember, they have to do the same with a BUNCH of other phone OEMs, and variants, so they could very quickly have a lab of hundreds of phones, which is hard to "babysit" when testing.
Sure, they can do it, in theory, but it gets expensive, and slow, and cumbersome very fast, and tends to accumulate.
Then, one carrier updates their S7 to Android N, while another leaves it on M. Now you have to add new tests, most likely, for the N variants, and start tracking those too, and babysitting them differently.
At some point, unless you have unlimited $$, and available engineers to do all this sort of "fancy test work and debug" and more, you simply have to call it, say, "we're only going to test these 5 S7 variants", of the 157 out there.
Guess what happens when yours *isn't* one of those chosen, and there's a carrier tweak, those causes issues? ;-]
We talk about it up here (or maybe your carrier site), and try to make them aware (I've only had one CS call with Fitbit, I wasn't exactly impress with the technical prowess, but I can be a bit overwhelming, coming from a s/w and h/w engineering background), so they'll see about getting that variant (a loaner or something), to see about fixing it.
Good luck, if the fix is your carrier pushing a firmware (OS, driver, whatever) fix, when they had never even intended to move to Android N, much less regularly update it.
It's a somewhat convoluted world out there right now, in this regard, the the key players are working on more modular solutions, it's just going to take time, like anything else.
Hopefully, through my long-winded explanation, I've clarified things, not muddied them further...
