Avoiding data loss when changing time zones – and how best to manage time zone changes in general

[BrianTheSwede]

Fitbit HR

Moto G6, Android 9

Hi everyone,

Here's what I read on a Fitbit help page:

How Do I Avoid Data Loss When Traveling?

If you're traveling between time zones with your tracker, to avoid data loss, choose a section below. Note that the time on your tracker may not update to reflect the time in your new time zone.

ANDROID PHONES

Tap the Today tab User-added image, and tap your profile picture.

Tap Advanced Settings.

Turn off the Automatic time zone option.

Tap Select time zone and select the correct time zone.

Please explain.

I travel across time zones frequently.

If I travel from New York to Berlin, I will of course change the time on my computer and phone to CET (or let it happen automatically).

1. You want me to shut OFF Automatic time zone.

1. Yet I'm asked to select the CORRECT time zone.

What is the correct time zone if it isn't the one that gets selected automatically? Or are you saying that the automatic time zone function on the Fitbit doesn't work (the "may not" bit)?

And, by the way, if I change time zones, I assume there will be days in the app with a different number of hours than 24, right – fewer when I travel east, then more when I travel back west? Or how is this handled? (And I can't travel around the world without an extra, or missing, day being displayed, presumably.)

For one's body (the parameters of which we all want to track), the reality is of course that, when traveling across time zones, day lengths do indeed change.

Thanks,

Brian

P.S. I selected paragraph indent from the menu, then was told "Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed" when I tried to post. Might want to fix that.

[AlvaroFitbit]

@BrianTheSwede Welcome! It's good that the community is growing! Sorry for the delay in my reply.

Let me help you with your timezone inquiries. 

We ask you to manually select the timezone so you know and choose when to sync your data. For example if you already have a high amount of steps you will want them to show in the correct date so you can sync your device and after that change the timezone (specially when traveling at night) so the data isn't assigned to a different date.

Your BMR will be calculated for a normal day and the activities/steps for that day will be calculated to add calories for physical activity. This will help with the calculation of the overall activity for an specific day.

Let me know how it goes.

[BrianTheSwede]

Thanks for the reply. Makes sense.

But how about my second question: In various display modes on the app, one sees 24 hours. Yet when crossing time zones, some days don't have 24 hours.

Are there days displayed (internal storage is a different matter) with more or less than 24 hours if one crosses time zones? Think about it: I leave New York at 21:00, change my Fitbit to 03:00, land in Berlin at 10:00 local time. How is that displayed?

And how do I handle round-the-world trips, which involve a full day's worth "fractional day losses", and crossing the Date Line?

Thanks,

Brian (someone who travels a lot...)

[Edgy04]

This is more of a request for more specific information.  I flew to the West Coast last week, and have been working my way back one time zone at a time.  When I went from CDT to EDT last night, my tracker did not notice it until this morning.  Then after it did, the number of steps changed for both yesterday and the day before.  The result was that I lost my string of 10K-step days that I had been working so hard to maintain.  Two days ago, I had to take several hundred steps right before midnight to get up to 10K.  But now, evidently the Fitbit app inferred that I had changed time zones before that, and so the steps counted as right after midnight instead of right before.  If I can tell it exactly when I crossed the time-zone boundary, then I can fix its accounting and get my string back.

How can I tell a Fitbit retrospectively when I crossed a time-zone boundary?

[Law88]

I have the same issue with sleep tracking when I change time zones. I just arrived from EST to PST and I guess my Fitbit didn’t register that I was in PST until the morning so the data is all off. Please help in improving Fitbit’s time zone change tracking. Agree that when changes time zones some days should be longer or shorter than 24 hours. Mine shows as 24 when it was really a 27 hour day and that’s probably where I lost my 3 extra hours of sleep.

[rlmoorex]

I had a similar problem. I travelled from OH to CA. I walked did 44K steps. When I returned and set my time back to Eastern Time from Pacific Time, the device suddenly was reporting 8K steps, 36K steps just vanished. Please help.

[Edgy04]

It happened to me again in May.  I was flying back from Australia (UTC+10) to the East Coast (UTC-4) with a stop in California (UTC-7).  Upon landing at SFO, I was at 8018 steps for the day.  Then I synced the Fitbit.  It dropped back to 1212 steps for the day, but awhile after that it resumed counting in the 8000s.  While in line at security, I hit 10000.  But then a few minutes later it dropped back to 8526, and then to 8000-something, and 25 minutes later, the count went down to 7303!  Three hours after that, the count was down to 6524.  By the end of the flight, the count was down to 6275.  It did not budge from that, even after 3 syncs.  It went up to 6279 briefly, but was at 6269 when I got up to exit the plane.

That was the last time I detected steps being deducted, and I finished the day with 8324.

The fact that the step count decreased at least 5 times while on a flight that only crossed 3 time-zone boundaries means that something is seriously wrong, that is not simply related to crossing time zones.