Charge 3 screen too dim

[747pilot]

My Charge 3 screen is excessively dim, even with a full charge.  I've tried restarting it with no result. It will occasionally come on bright but after a few seconds it's dim again and I can't get it back. This is indoors and is still difficult to read. Outside with any amount of sunlight, it's impossible to read.

Moderator edit: subject for clarity

[Knight_of_Ni]

@google when are you going to weigh in on this? Since the original Fitbit
team won’t, we are hoping you can show some decency and take ownership of a
faulty product from the company you just brought into your family.

[bravopunk]

Same issue! I agree that this feels like planned obsolescence on the part of Fitbit which is shameful if true. Hopefully they address this issue.

[Duke2905]

Mine too! Just a heap of junk in this state

[BMW300c]

I have restarted and rebooted my device and I cannot get the dimness to revert back to normal. All settings are properly set.

Thank you for any assistance!!

[BrianArrenberg]

Sorry to say I just feel sad that you won’t take responsibility for the shortcomings of your own product especially you knowingly that there is an inherent problem with the screen brightness, as testament on inline reviews as a lot of others have this same issue, guarantee or not this is not a normal issue but a Fitbit wide issue that needs to be addressed by your company & not brushed off and expect us to buy a new one. 

Anyway enough said, from me now being another lost customer to your device 

[PGribble]

I am baffled. I was able to correct the dimness in settings.
Good luck

Sent from my iPhone

[Knight_of_Ni]

Most of us are having issues even when changing the brightness settings to
Auto or Normal.

What did you do? If you did the above, then your Fitbit doesn’t have the
same issue. Yet.

[BMW300c]

Auto to normal changes, but the brightness of the screen remains dim. 😭

[SunsetRunner]

Good point about Google, Fitbit's turnover is miniscule compared with Google's. Their motivation clearly isn't a direct increase in profits...

Also, thanks for the suggestions about the BBC, I'll add a second string to this particular bow.

On a technical note relating to the hardware, my suspicion is that in the majority of cases (not all) the display backlight goes 'low emission' causing the problem. It's hard to find out exactly what technology fitbit use but I suspect it's an LCD display with LED backlights. Once it's started this process is irreversable, no ammount tweaking will ever make it bright again. If the problem was caused by software or firmware you would have thought that Fitbit would have resolved it by now.

Let's see how long this post stays up before the 'thought police' strike!

[BrianArrenberg]

The only thing I would add to this is that the charge 3 is an amoled display as opposed to LED 

[PGribble]

Whatever is causing this, the company should really give it some attention. Too many with this program to be a fluke!


Sent from my iPhone

[Knight_of_Ni]

On a side note... the moderators are not the enemy... they are just doing their job. And maybe it is a thankless one. Maybe they actually agree but cannot do anything about it. Or, maybe there are some in Fitbit who CAN do something (not talking about drastic stuff, but rather effecting positive change and ownership from the inside). 

[TheGrumps]

@Knight_of_Ni I agree about the moderators' position. They'll be following a script and doing their best (possibly from Fitbit's point of view and not ours).

When I had an issue (water ingress) about two years ago the C3 was replaced without fuss. They didn't want the dead unit returned so it was taken apart. I found an obvious manufacturing mistake, and ended up in a one-way email conversation with their engineering team. I posted my findings with pictures and evidence, and they didn't reply. Nobody took ownership of the problem, and they still don't.

[Duke2905]

That's what I'm going to do. Fm

[Duke2905]

What is staggering is that no one from Fitbit has noticed this thread and others making a similar point! They just don't care once you've purchased their product.

[Duke2905]

So it should go beyond the moderator layer to someone who can do something to fix the problem

[ducker]

The "solution" is to get a charge 4.   If I had my charge 3 for more than just over a year, I might have considered it.... or if I didn't come here and see similar issues with the newest charge 4; I would have thought about doing that.  for now, I'll just use my charge 3 as a pedometer with out digital read out; and hope that google takes the fitbit gamification aspect of the community and open it up to a lot more devices.  So I can challenge fitbit wearable friends and non-fitbit friends in contests! 

[Massford1944]

Hi
My thoughts exactly. My messages are being deleted by the moderators now,
so they do not want to have the bad news about fitbit broadcast.

[Lotty123]

The complaints just keep coming. What is the point of a charge 3. I've ordered a much cheaper product at a 5th of the price. Arrives tomorrow. If it lasts a year and I can still see the screen I will be quids in. Goodbye fitbit all you needed to do was make contact and let hundreds of dissatisfied customers know, if this is something that could be fixed or not. 

[JoAlan]

I wouldn't know that it was working but the app has up to date information. It's fully charge with no display