Well, I've been researching this issue for a couple of hours, and I've come to the conclusion that the problem is very likely *NOT* due to any kind of firmware update. Rather, I think it's just that the rechargeable batteries in all the Charge 2 units have a limited lifespan, like all such batteries, and that lifespan has run its natural course.
If you consider the time period when the Charge 2 was a new or current model, and then add a rough average of a couple of years of functionality from the battery, you get a natural spreading out of failing batteries in these units over the past year or so — which coincides with the tsunami of complaints about Charge 2 firmware updates ruining batteries. But consider: Fitbit releases firmware updates on a regular basis anyway, to fix bugs, in some cases to add features, and generally to keep their products operating as smoothly as possible. Everyone would call them negligent if they didn't! So at any given point in time, it can't have been very long since the most recent firmware update.
When any particular unit's battery finally conks out, as all batteries do, its owner naturally goes looking for a proximate cause to blame. Soon it occurs to them that some firmware update or another has come out recently. *BINGO!* — It's all too easy and convenient to accuse Fitbit of nefariously releasing a firmware update for the purpose of causing an older product to fail, because it provides a narrative in which the owner can cast themselves as a victim who's been wronged. Once a few people voice that idea on forums and others see it, it takes on a life of its own, and soon *everybody* is howling about how Fitbit supposedly screwed them over by intentionally making the battery stop working... in a unit they've been using for well over a year, two years, even three-plus years. Well, that's poppycock. What's really going on is simply that the battery has reached the end of its normal service life.
There's a reason why the warranty period is what it is: it represents the *minimum* length of time that the product is designed and expected to last. Simple statistics would suggest that the average *actual* lifetime of the product in question is probably at least twice that, but the warranty means the company guarantees that the product will work for *at least* that long. Any use you get out of it beyond that point is GRAVY.
Imagine a company runs a brewery and sells its beer in bottles, and it's really good beer, and people really like drinking it, and it says very clearly right there on the label that the bottle is guaranteed to contain *no less than* 16 ounces of that beer. Sometimes, you might get lucky and find some *extra* beer in your bottle, but you know *at a minimum* there's 16 ounces inside. And then later, after people have been drinking their beer for a while, a bunch of them start getting to the bottom of their respective bottles, until they're empty. Suddenly, they can't get any more beer out! So many of them start raising hell about how the beer company has cheated them, and made their beer go away when there should've been much more, and they demand to each be given a whole new bottle-full of beer, as if they're OWED it. And when they don't get it, they raise hell some more, and talk trash about the beer company to anyone who will listen, and swear they'll never buy that kind of beer ever again.
Pretty ridiculous, right?
Meanwhile, the beer company, just to be nice — even though they've done nothing wrong and delivered everything they promised — as a gesture of goodwill offers to each of those customers a complimentary 25% discount on their next bottle of beer. And the customers yet again get all riled up, screeching and moaning about how they're being cheated and disrespected, etc. etc. etc.
Gimme a f___ing break. If you drink all the beer in the bottle you bought, and you like the beer and want more of it, then what you do is… say "Thanks, I'll have another!" and you BUY ANOTHER BOTTLE OF BEER.
Why this concept seems to escape the comprehension of so many people, I'll never understand.
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