Charge 2 battery is draining quickly

[cmch]

Hello.  I've been using my Charge 2 for several months now.  I encountered my first charging issue this week.  I usually charge it about once a week.  Yesterday I topped the battery off to well over half full, and overnight I received an app update on my Android.  This morning I noticed my Charge 2 was not giving me notifications, and I wasn't getting my hourly reminders to move like I usually do.  I finally hooked it up to my charger again since I needed it to get through the weekend.  The indicator showed over half full, but was otherwise unresponsive.  The app showed I had zero steps.  I reset the tracker and it said it was dead?  Has this ever happened to anyone else?  It seems to be charging ok now.

Moderator edit: updated title for clarity

[RobNob333]

I have had my Fitbit Charge 2 for about 8 months now and it has been working great. But for the first time it just got an update from Fitbit 10th/11th Aug 2019 . So I am not sure if that means they may have discovered what the problem was, OR it might mean I start to have problems.  It will be interesting to see.
I passed on my original Fitbit Charge and it was working great but 2 months later at about 13 months old it did the battery thing. Fully charged to empty in a couple of hours.
So I guess I am wondering if you had the update before you had problems, and if not perhaps the update fixes it if you can get it to stay on long enough. The update takes about 10 mins and does it while connected via bluetooth.

[josvanswaaij]

I am currently running 22.55.2 on the Charge 2. When fully charged it lasts for about 4-5 days. I use alarms, heart rate and steps counter mostly. I track my sleep as well, since that was for me an important feature. I do not use notifications from the phone and I have ‘always sync’ switched to off. The last one has little use for me personally; I sync once every day by hand and that works well. Since the device has a very small battery to begin with, I believe that it is not realistic for the device to continuously use bluetooth during the day, it has sufficient storage to last till the next sync. I think this feature is the big battery drainer and it sometimes gets switched on in settings possibly when updating the devices firmware.

There is an update I saw, so I will test what it does later today.

It now on version 22.58.0. I’ll charge it to full and then test for a couple of days. All day sync did not automatically turn on.

Moderator edit: merged reply

[BrianDennistoun]

I installed update on 9th August. Battery ran down within an hour. Recharged 4 times with same problem. App shows battery 100% but screen blank. Very disappointed and unhappy. Has anyone found a solution or heard if Fitbit are aware and if they will announce a fix?

[rbess1965]

Mine did go through an update. As with my phone, when it goes through an OS
update and things stop working correctly, I decided to factory reset my
Versa and uninstall any Fitbit apps that I added to the Fitbit. I had added
extra apps like Switch, which uses IFTTT to control smart things in my
house. I also uninstalled a custom watch face I was using before. Either
one of those apps could have been causing the problem. I also uninstalled a
golf app range finder. I believe the watch itself has GPS built-in and when
that is on constantly it will run the battery down but I couldn't confirm
any of these things as the problem. Anyway I deleted all that, then deleted
the Fitbit app from my phone, removed it from my saved Bluetooth
connections, factory refreshed the watch and started over. Set it back up
like new, put Switch and Golf back on, chose a regular Fitbit watch face
and the battery life is back to normal. I don't know which step helped it.
I chose the nuclear option which was better than not having it at all. I
like the notifications feature of this thing best and wanted to keep using
it.

[josvanswaaij]

Just installed latest firmware and fully charged. Let’s see what happens.

[djmcdan]

I have the same problem and seemed to start after the firmware update.  Is there a way to roll back the update?

[josvanswaaij]

now two days futrher and my fitbit is at 75%. Little amount of use (mostly wearing it, telling time, heart rate measure, steps counting and some preset alarms, so if there is a problem still, you want to sync your watch and then reset it to factory settings and re-sync again. Make sure you sync to only one device/smartphone and turn off ‘allday sync’ for a few days to rule out it is related to your smartphone push activities.

Moderator edit: format

[rbess1965]

Not sure. I factory reset my watch, removed the app from my phone, deleted
the Bluetooth connection from my phone and then reinstalled everything like
new. My battery life has gone back to 4 days, maybe a little more.

[Seniority]

Like many others it seems odd that the battery on my charge 2 suddenly doesn’t hold a charge. Why would a company the size of Fitbit do this to their customers?? Time to make a change.  

[djmcdan]

Should be claas action

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

[runranrun]

I just purchased a used fitbit 2 off ebay, got a great deal, looks like brand new as in never used, came with battery completely drained, charged it up fully thinking ok we will set it up tomorrow morning, battery completely gone in 8 hours, does that seem right?  Luckily I can send this thing back.  My charge HR, will go 24 hours even when the battery is low, all day sync, and always connected are both enabled, three years going and get about 5 days per charge.  Luckily they made the HR pretty rock solid.

[meesh1998]

I posted about my battery draining issue in this thread a year ago. As much as I love the app and web interface of Fitbit, right after this occurred (almost a year ago), and only getting pushback from Fitbit that 'from their diagnostics, my device seemed to be keeping a charge just fine' when it wasn't, I switched to the Apple Watch. There was a Black Friday sale where the Apple Watch was only $30 more than the newest Fitbit. And, you know the best part? It hasn't taken a dump on me like my previous 6 Fitbit devices did. Do I have to charge it every night? Yes...and it's become no less a hassle than charging my Fitbit. 

[Seniority]

I’ve no idea why those in charge of marketing at Fitbit think it’s a good business decision to abuse their customers but it’s easy to change brands and problem solved! 

[Rich_Laue]

@runranrun that is one of the problems with buying a used device that has a lithium battery. 

A lithium battery left dead starts to self destruct. This would have nothing to do with the tracker but with the way the battery has been maintained. 

[runranrun]

What you say is not entirely true because they manufacture these, box them up, and they sit in the box for who knows how long, their is no on/off button so the batteries should all be at zero when they are unboxed, and hold a charge, that's why every last anything you buy that is rechargeable says to fully charge the device before use.  Unless the fitbit has an auto shut off when it doesn't detect a human pulse.  But, when a battery is faulty it's going to fall down right away, vs. holding any charge you put on it, or lithiums can get a charging memory as well, but in general if it's not holding a charge for any length of time just replace the battery.  Anyway, 10-15 minutes is enough to give a review to the fitbit 2, go through all the setup and settings, it's a decent unit, but I may as well just hunt for a used fitbit 3 instead.

[Rich_Laue]

All Fitbits are shipped shipped the factory turned off and charged to about 50%. Also most of the trackers do have the ability to be turned off, some have an off command through settings, while others require a series of steps while in its charger. 

[runranrun]

But of course they all turn off when the battery is fully discharged..  Fitbit would do well to buyback all it's faulty trackers, to say that's to much is to admit the products are lol, faulty, instead we throw the lithium batteries into the landfill.

[aiyer453]

Same issue here - I posted about it recently too. I bought my Charge 2 HR in May of 2018 and didn't have any issues until recently. I've tried the reset/restart process countless times, removed it entirely from my phone, re-synced it multiple times, and still am losing charge (literally from 100% to 0%) within 3-4 hours. 

[acbwoy]

Same issue with me. I eventually junked it and bought the inspire hr. Works
decently. No floor count but rest works well and well priced.

[Lioness54]

Exactly what I am having trouble with. The tracker charges and works fine but the battery drains in less than 4 hours. The lights on the Fitbit can probably illuminate a small city they are so bright. I have turned off all the special functions, including the HR monitor. No improvement. I have reset it at least a dozen times. No improvement. I'm about to try a new brand.