Charge 4 screen too dim

[kathamlin]

I tried restarting it using the charger and 8 second button hold, and I see the smily face but cannot make out anything else on the screen. Did I change some setting? I don't know. I can't see the screen to find out!

If I have to wear a watch AND a fitness tracker AND a medical alert bracelet, I'm going to need more wrists.

It's really not much use if the screen won't light up enough to be visible.

Syncing to android app. The new display one. It does sync without issue.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Julia_G]

Hi, @kathamlin , it sounds like your Charge 4 may be on the Dim screen setting.  I would suggest going into a very dark room.  Hopefully when it is really dark you will be able to see well enough to change the setting.  From the clock screen swipe left as far as you can go.  On the final screen you should see the settings menu.  Tap to open.  The first item on the menu is brightness. Tap to toggle between “auto” “normal” and “dim”.  Dim is almost invisible!

[kathamlin]

Thank you, @Julia_G . I did get into a very, very dark place and was able to see that the screen brightness settings options are "auto" and "normal". I did not see an option for dim. I was able to change the setting to 'normal' from 'auto'. This made the screen on the tracker somewhat visible for about 4 hours, after which it went back to being not visible

Currently, if I'm able to get in basically pitch-black surroundings, I can see thst only a small portion of the screen is capable of lighting up at all.

Apparently the LED display is just no longer viable. Sad to have such a brief life for what was not a cheap product, but as we learned from the iPhone, it may be in the manufacturer's best interest to incorporate a fairly short working life into their products. How many millions of dollars worth of iPhones are sold annually? How many millions of dollars of Nokia phones are sold annually? (You get the drift? Nokia made phones that just lasted too long and didn't break if you looked at them funny!)

[Julia_G]

Dim is definitely an option on the Charge 4 brightness settings.  The reason you didn’t see it is because Dim is almost invisible!  

However, a fading screen is one of the things longer term users of the Charge 4 have sometimes reported.  The Charge 4 was released in March 2020.  That makes it pretty old in electronic device terms.  I have had my Charge 4 since it first came out.  I used it for a year or so and then leant it to a friend who used it for another couple of years before she returned it to me.  Even though I suspect my friend did not look after it optimally (it’s important not to let the battery go into frequent deep discharge) in fact it is still functioning and  useable, although I do agree that the screen is significantly dimmer than I think it used to be.

I suspect your Charge 4’s battery is also coming close to the end of its useable life and that is also why the screen is fading after 4 hours.  As I am sure you are aware, all rechargeable batteries have a limited number of recharge cycles.  The batteries in small, wrist worn, devices are also very small and the current technology means that they are likely to fail sooner than larger batteries with more capacity.

Of course I don’t know exactly how old your Charge 4 is, but it would have been discontinued as soon as the Charge 5 came out, so I expect it did pretty good service. 

Below is a pic with my 3.5 year old Charge 4 on Normal brightness setting and another on Dim.  I had to take the Dim picture in a totally dark room so you can see nothing but the screen - the picture is much, much brighter than what I could actually see myself…

If you think it is time to upgrade, most of the screen dimness issues have been resolved by the colour screens on the newer Charge series.  I currently am wearing a Charge 6 and am a big fan (but note that floor counting has now been dropped from the later Charge models).  If you get in touch with Fitbit Customer support on Contact.fitbit.com and let them know that you’re out of warranty Fitbit is failing they are likely to offer you a significant discount on an upgraded model.

Pictures!

And now Dim

[kathamlin]

Thank you again for the response. 

I do think this was the LED screen rather than the battery because only a portion of the screen had any pixels that lit up at all.

I did bite the bullet and after reading CNET and similar websites that review current tech offerings, I did decide to stick with the Fitbit line. I debated about the different models and did upgrade to a Charge 6. So far, I'm fairly happy with it. I do like the display, I'm getting used to the slightly different interface, and the battery life, considering the brightness of the display, is impressive.

I only kind of miss the stairs climbed--the charge 4 got fairly quickly to a state where I feel like it was probably grossly exaggerating my stair climbing activity and I no longer considered it to be any accurate reflection of my activity that day. It did make for some fun numbers though. 

Hey, it would have been really nice if someone from Fitbit had reached out to offer a discount! I have an official Fitbit account (obviously) which indicated what product I owned, and regularly synced. I know other companies that I own tech devices from have proactively offered discounts on newer models, whether the item I owned was approaching a time where it would no longer be supported with software/firmware updates or even if I'd just owned it for, say, 2 years! I don't always take them up on these offers, but I certainly have done so at times, especially if they offered a new device that had features I found desirable.

It turns out that the Charge 6 can do an ECG (non medical grade) and an EDA scan for

That may have gone a long way in making me feel that anyone from the company was even going to pretend to be apologetic about the potential of intentional obsolescence being included in their products.

P.S. my iPad classic from the late 2000s? Still going strong! Apple hasn't supported the firmware in a decade and obviously they don't even make iPods of any style, any longer, nor update iTunes....and yet, it endures.

It really is just strange how some products are made to last and others...are made with other priorities in mind, with longevity of use not high on the list.

----

I can't edit my above post. I was going to say, the EDA scan and ECG capabilities would have been pretty convincing selling points.

But no one tried. C'est la vie!

[ksottung]

Totally agree! I have the exact same issue.