Just wanted to add myself as another data point in what appears to be a pattern of issues with people updating their Charge 3s to the 1.88.11 firmware. My advice; if you are getting a message to update your firmware on your Charge 3 DON'T DO IT. If you look at all the other recent postings, you can see a multitude of people had their Charge 3s bricked after doing the update.
I had the same exact issues as others are posting:
- Extreme battery drain after the update (from 100 to dead in a few hours)
- Noticed condensation appear on the sensor faces while I have not been in any wet environment (has since evaporated, guessing has something to do with overworking the battery)
- Sudden pixels and artifacts appearing on the watch face, screen jumping and tearing
- Now face is completely black, Charge 3 won't link up to phone, and I am unable to reset it.
- Only thing the band will do now is strongly and continuously vibrate when squeezed.
I've already created a service ticket (#37800408) but the response was that, since my Charge 3 was out of warranty, all they could do was provide a 35% discount code to help. I'm sure others feel the same way, that this is a very disappointing response when clearly the firmware update has caused many people to no longer have functioning devices. Some acknowledgement of the issue would be great... it's just frustrating that the device broke through no fault of my own, but actually due to an update from Fitbit themselves, and I'm expected to just buy a new one. Who's to say this won't happen again with the next band? Then will I be expected to again purchase another band, to have it be ruined by an update once again? Sorry, just wanted to vent a bit, because it doesn't appear that any official recognition of the issue is going to happen.
