I’ve had many different types of Fitbit Charge models. Now I am working with my second Charge 4. But what I will say here counts for all previous ones too.
In the beginning I connected to my Charge to the Fitbit app on my pc. But after a while, I had enough of all the “Cannot connect…” type of messages, with faulty diagnosis from everywhere, including here on this forum... Sometimes it was easy to fix. Other times it took half a day or more. I’ve installed and reinstalled so many times, again and again.
Then I moved to my iPad. There the connection is more stable, but still not assured. Here the trick often is, to turn off Bluetooth for an instance, and then turn it back on. The Fitbit app will then message, it cannot connect, but that’s not right, it does connect. It is a wrong message. This trick also works when when you see the progress bar haltering in the middle and than you get the message: Connection is slow… Sometimes it stays in the middle for ever unless you do the trick. And when you do, everything that needs to be done, is done in a second. So you were waiting for nothing. The software probably gets trapped in a loop. Setting Bluetooth off and on again, get it out of the trap.
Another thing that keeps recurring model after model, year after year… Is the fact in periods the fitbit seems to be able to track my sleep. But in other periods, whatever I try, Fitbit keeps failing to do so. And yes, I do restart my iPad often. I do reboot my Charge often. I even do reinstall the Fitbit app often. Nothing helps.
After years I have found that this failing to detect sleep stages has to do with a low heartbeat. The lower my heart goes (which happens in periods too) the more chance Fitbit starts failing. The moment my heartbeat goes up, detection comes back. In my estimation, a heartbeat below 45, make Fitbit fail detection.
You would think they would have detected and solved those problems by now, years later. Guess not. I wonder how other devices, not Fitbit devices, are doing. Maybe my next one will not be a Fitbit anymore.
