My wife's charge 3 went on the blink after 2 years with the dreaded horizontal lines and went dim and after various attempts to fix it with restarts, factory resets and long resets, the folks at fitbit offed her a 35% discount on a new on . Being curious I decidered to continue its use and tried it in the pool. Well it stopped altogether and noted that it had taken on moisture when I examined the backside of it. I decidered to take it apart to see what made it tick and all the black seal strip around the face seemed to be breaking down a bit but when I pried the back sensor off It came off way too easy without any heat and the seal material had broken down into a green slimy goo with a faint odor of fragrence and it exsisted inside the casing as well. The elasticity had severely been broken down chemacally unlike the gaceplate that showed less degredation. This leads me to the conclusion that the sealant material fitbit is using is not holding up to normal wear which I find most disturbing. The contamination happens to be a mixture of skin oil and hand lotion which is a pretty unavoidable issue and of very little understanding with the folks at fitbit. I hope that this is not part of their preplanned business model which fitbit will continue with for the future. It is interesting to note the problems many have with fitbits that obviously exceed a lack of expectations. A $27 dollar timex watch offers better water resistance which has many more places for mosture to invade the interior and its going on 8 years of continuous use. I would hope that they would include a simple improvement to make their product more of a leader in the market of wearables.
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