Why it is not possible to have Ionic and Charge 3 connected to one account?

[Bonasa]

I wonder why it is not possible to have Ionic and Charge 3 connected to one account? Will it ever change?

[Tony.r]

@Bonasa I currently have a  Charge 3 paired with my Ionic. Admitibly it was paired a while back with an earlier edition of the Android app V2.81 which I believe may have had a bug which enabled the pairing to take place. Being honest the two do not coincide well together with no direct notifications working on either  device and I had issues trying to update the firmware on my Ionic leaving. me to upair the Charge 3 to do so.

I have also just upgraded  my phone and was forced to update to the current version of the app so am assuming if I was to break the pairing now I would not be possible  to repair under the current version.

When I first paired the two together, the Charge 3 would always appear as the dominant device  on my account but something I have noticed today, iis my Ionic now appears as the dominant device even though I have not updated the app or anything else, so. perhaps something behind the scenes has changed. Maybe compatibility may continue to improve over time but who knows. 

[Bonasa]

Hello Tony

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I very much hope Fitbit is going to fix rather quickly what I see as an abysmal failure: none of their last three inventions (Charge 3, Versa, and Ionic) work together. They (Fitbit) must understand that at least some users have good use for more of their devices. They do unerstand, I am sure, as one of the Help articles attests.

Fitbit Help Article: Can I use more than one Fitbit device with the same account?

Here I quote for a quick reference: 

Adding more than one Fitbit device to your account gives you the convenience of switching between devices while still seeing a holistic view of your daily activity on your dashboard. You may want to:

• Wear a smaller device for all-day step counting and a larger device for workouts.
• Wear a smaller device while you sleep.
• Use MobileTrack if you forget your Fitbit device at home.
• Switch between any devices you like. Your account can have one of each device model and MobileTrack.

Well, something like that I had in mind when I decided to get a Charge 3 in addition to my Ionic. The intention was to use Ionic when I need the onboard GPS and use Charge 3 for other activities (like swimming - so Charge 2, although now nicely discounted in my area - was not an option). Also for long runs I thought it very desirable to have a smaller device that holds battery power for as long as possible: with Ionic my experience shows, that the maximum one can hope for is some 7,5 hours with GPS on - anything beyond that seems too much for Ionic (not that this is too bad, it is enough mostly, but not always, and it will, I assume, get worse when my Ionic gets older).

Unfortunately the article quoted above goes further:

Note that you can't have Fitbit Charge 3, Fitbit Ionic, and Fitbit Versa connected to the same account. If you have any combination of these devices, be sure to have only one connected to your account at a time.

Unfortunately I saw that article only after I got the Charge 3 when I started digging deeper after discovering that switchig between Ionic and Charge 3 is anything but seamless (for those without this experience, please note: you cannot add Charge 3 to your account without removing Ionic, by doing so, you loose your settings on the device, so when you want to go back from Charge 3 to Ionic, you start anew. And of course it is not therefore possible to quickly swap between the two devices, it takes some time to re-setup and you need internet connection to do that).

So please, dear Fitbit, do something about it!!!!