Hi All,
I just wanted to let people know that shutdown now works properly again after this firmware update. It was broken by a firmware in late 2019 (not my video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l7AcD3WhyU
There are plenty of threads about it in the forum e.g.
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Ionic/Ionic-battery-drains-while-powered-off/td-p/4186605
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Other-Versa-Smartwatches/Versa-won-t-turn-on-after-shutdown/td-p/398...
https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Other-Versa-Smartwatches/Battery-Drain-When-manually-shut-down/td-p/...
Judging by some of those posts I think this may affect Versa watches too.
Today is the first time shutdown on my Ionic has worked properly in over a year. It has started working immediately after the latest update. It's just a shame that (in my experience) Fitbit rarely admit that there is an issue with anything and I think that's an issue in itself that needs to be addressed for everyone's benefit. In this case the "solution" was that there was a new way of shutting it down (hold all 3 buttons). In fact, what that actually does is a hard reset, so I suspect the shutdown process was actually hanging and never completed (perhaps due to an infinite loop which was burning up the CPU and hence the battery).
I'm making this post here to highlight the fact that despite never acknowledging it as an issue, it is now fixed in the latest firmware. It's just so disappointing they didn't address this before when it would have been so easily fixed.
It's also disappointing that in the release notes for their release they don't give details about what is fixed - it lists 1 or 2 new features but under what's fixed it always just says general bug fixes. Details would be better.
The forum moderators seem to be ineffective. The same things are suggested over and over again even in the face of an obvious issue and I don't think anything substantial actually ever really makes its way to the developers. It just seems like fire fighting to me. They're all very sympathetic and polite but rarely get results when there's a serious issue. Are there not meetings with developers by support people saying "we're getting a lot of this on the forums" etc? If not there should be. And if there are, then why isn't anything done about it? Why did it take over a year to address this particular issue?
This is the first firmware update released for my watch since Fitbit was bought by Google and it actually fixed a long-standing issue. I suspect this is Google's influence and hopefully Google can help Fitbit to improve their processes. I'm not sure how much QA is going on in Fitbit, but they have been badly let down by firmware updates in the past (I, like many other people, have had an Ionic bricked by a firmware update and Fitbit replaced it). I was very nervous about doing this update but I'm glad I did as I can finally turn off my watch again (which sounds like a ridiculous thing to have to be glad about - this is basic stuff...)
Hopefully this update is a sign of things to come and hopefully under Google's leadership Fitbit's software will improve. Their devices are great (I previously had the surge, now have an Ionic and also have an aria scales) but their software lets them down. I'm nervous doing a software update now every time Fitbit release one (I am not nervous doing software updates with any other company).
I think Fitbit could be so much better if they paid a bit more attention to their software. Hopefully Google can help them fix this.
Moderator Edit: Clarified subject
