What exactly is the purpose & use of Syncing the Phone [In addition to Inspire 2 ]

[John-99]

I note there is an option to manually sync the Phone, but whereas I can sync the Inspire 2 manually or automatically and keep everything updated on the App this may not be the case with syncing the phone.  Sometimes the "Phone" page on the Fitbit App shows it was some hours or a day since it updated. When this happens the info shown on my Fitbit App may still seem correct and synced. For instance the heart rate graph is fully updated to the current time &  the steps total shown on the Inspire 2 on my wrist matches the total steps displayed for Today on my Fitbit App.

Do I need to sync the Phone? & if so what is the advantage of this & what changes will I then see?

Using the Phone page & the circular arrows top right does not always update the time since the "Phone" last synced

I am using: Inspire 2, on an Android phone {Xiaomi 11t} running OEM MiUI 13 based on Android 14

Fitbit device & App generally work as expected, but have some minor glitches.
I will keep individual posts to single subjects.

[LZeeW]

@John-99   You need to sync with your phone to transfer your data to your Fitbit account.

[John-99]

@LZeeW Thank you for replying and trying to answer my question, but I still fail to understand this.

As I asked in my original post that you replied to:  "Do I need to sync the Phone? & if so what is the advantage of this & what changes will I then see? "

Tappping the Inspire 2 icon in Fitbit App > Connected to Fitbit > Devices > Inspire 2Updates the data I see in the Fitbit App, that I; possibly naively; assume is my account data.

What changes if I then update the phone, and where do I see this account data, if not in the Fitbit App.  Hopefully you will be able to clear up my confusion.

Thanks John

[JohnnyRow]

I have no idea what you mean by syncing the Inspire 2 manually.  Some data get passed from tracker to phone by bluetooth to keep some phone display looking current.  Is that what you mean?  But until phone syncs, nothing gets to main fitbit database and will be permanently lost if anything happens to tracker, or if you do as factory reset, or if it resets itself; and some things need to go to main database for calculations that are not done locally.  But if you are willing to risk everything and potentially lose all your data, just be aware of the risk you are taking by not syncing phone.

Incidentally I have never seen anywhere anything called syncing from tracker, automatically or manually.  Please show me reference.

[John-99]

Hi @JohnnyRow .

Thanks for the reply. I'm rather busy Today but will give a full answer over the weekend.

[John-99]

P.S. I don't seem to have edit option on my reply above

Attached screen shot of usual interface with sync in progress as shown at top edge after pull down.

 

And the dashboard which probably shows similar info but I've only just now discovered that

 

[John-99]

@JohnnyRow Just a quick additional follow on question.

Where is the main database that you refer to and can we access it either directly or indirectly.

What are the calculations not done locally and how do we access them. As I say even if phone access is a day overdue and it is not syncing from the curved arrows icons I do not notice a difference once it behaves and synced.

I must get on with other things now, but thanks again for the answer. I am new to Fitbit so may not use correct accepted terminology.

The dashboard I provided a screenshot of in my last reply to self is a new discovery for me this morning, & I won't have time to explore it Today.

[JohnnyRow]

Let me approach this indirectly by describing Fitbit data flow and see if that answers your questions.
Fitbit data can exist 3 places: your tracker, your phone, fitbit main database or "the cloud" which is presumably hundreds or thouands of computer servers backed up many places, maybe by Amazon servers, we don't know or care, at least I don't.

Data is originally collected and stored on your watch. When your phone is nearby, it is continually transmitted to your phone wirelessly via bluetooth. So your step count, calorie burn, etc display on phone usually matches display on watch. That happens automatically all the time with no intervention as long as you don't have bluetooth turned off.

The next step called "syncing" is when the data goes from your phone via wifi through the internet to the fitbit main database/"cloud" where it goes into permanent storage keyed by your Fitbit ID/email.
Until your data gets to the cloud, it is really just local to you and is subject to possible loss.
The process of your data going from your phone to the Fitbit database is called "syncing". That is the only syncing I know of. Syncing is initiated automatically from time to time (don't ask me how often), or you can initiate it yourself by pulling down of phone 'Today' screen. There is a place within the app where you can check the last time it did sync, by tapping on the battery icon at top left screen. I consider that the safest way to be sure sync did complete. Occasionally people do run into problems of not being able to sync.

I can't be sure of this, but I figure that there are some calculations, perhaps better suited to the more powerful computers synced to, maybe such as figuring sleep stages and calculating resting heart rate, such that data is sent back at end of the sync as a two-way process.

The fitbit.com dashboard that you just discovered is perhaps the clearest look into the main fitbit database as the data comes right from there. A caveat on the fitit.com dashboard though: it has not been maintained for many years. The data is still good, but don't expect to see it all presented the same way. It has some displays that I still prefer, such as being able to see all-day heart rate data over the width of a PC screen. And it shows some measures that are not still used that might cause some confusion so have to look at labels carefully.