Versa 3 stability issues

[DSwanson]

Hello.  Hopefully, this will help folks out.  So far I have had two issues to appear to be related to hardware stability.  Both were solved by trying the following. 

First try a reset and then if that doesn't work allow the unit's battery to fully discharge which will force the unit into a full shut down and then (of course) connect it to the charging base and recharge it.  That may reset the electronics so that it will work properly again. 

Details...

1. After about a month, my premium online account was complaining that it wasn't able to capture my heart rate so that it could track and compute my sleep score.  It had been working for sometime and then just stopped over one night.  Resetting/rebooting the watch fixed this problem.  The reset menu can be found in the settings menu.

2. The side "virtual" button stopped working.  This version doesn't have a mechanical switch.  Since the side switch is used for navigation, this made the watch unusable.  After playing around with it, the watch ended up in one of the lower menus and was stuck because I couldn't navigate up to the top. Lol.  I think in the "swimming timer."  In the mean time, I requested an in-warranty replacement unit which has been on its way and should arrived tomorrow. Anyway, the battery ran down after running in the swimming timer for several hours and then the unit shut off.  When I attached the watch to the charging wire/base, it booted up and the side switch was working again.  I let it charge up and watch has been working for a days.  Apparently, a hard reset by allowing the battery to completely discharge and let the electronics completely power off and made the side switch work again.  I'll probably return this unit anyway because I might have just been lucky.  But the battery discharged hard reset seemed to work. 

Good luck!

[Guy_]

Hi @DSwanson  - to get out of a swim a double button press is required.

When the battery runs out the watch switches off. You can do the same from the Settings menu with Shutdown.

It would seem your watch is working normally, as a shutdown and restart generally loads a fresh copy of the OS.

[DSwanson]

A couple of notes:

1. the side button, which is used to navigate to the top level menus was not working.  I tried double tapping the screen, etc. and that didn't work.  So, it appears that a functioning side button is necessary.

2. I think that there are two levels of reset -- a software reset and a hardware reset.  At least that is the way it is with most electronics.  The menu based reset which, btw I tried the menu reset to get the side button to work, is a soft reset and it didn't work.  The side button still didn't work after the menu based reset.  Only after the full power down and power up because the battery was discharged, did the side button start to work.

[DSwanson]

I received my replacement watch.  Thank you very much Fitibit.  Excellent customer service! 

Since the old watch is now working now, I want to continue using it until if/when it fails again. All of my settings and personalizations are in the old watch.  It is too bad that you cannot have two (or multiple) devices running at the same time under the same app and account. Maybe there is a way to do it.  Anyway, I tried adding the new watch but I am forced to delete the old watch from the app and account first.  I guess that you cannot have everything.  🙂  I may just replace the watch anyway. Or my son has the same model so we may keep it handy in case he has problems (that is option 2).  I will keep an eye on it and let you know. 

Important point: If the battery discharge reset works reliably, then maybe Fitbit tech support can offer this as a solution when someone calls with this type of issue.  It will probably take 24 hours (several hours to discharge it and and then charge it again) but if it works, then a replacement watch may not be necessary.  That would have been the case with me and I would have preferred keeping my old watch if possible.  Unfortunately, tech support had already sent a replacement when I had found out that my old watch was working again.  Although it is possible that my watch is indeed defective and it will fail again. Only the Fitbit engineers and support team will know for certain.

Lastly, I couldn't figure out why the new watch wouldn't power up.  On all new watches, there is a plastic peel away overlay on the backside where terminals are.  Turns out that a couple of the little circular punch-outs from overlay were stuck to one of the terminals.  Not certain why the terminals need to be exposed (with punch outs) with the overlay installed.  The punch-outs don't seem to be necessary or maybe they weren't removed when they should have been. The overlay is removed (peeled away) when the customer receives the unit and there is a risk that the punch outs will remain in place and cover the terminals thereby preventing the unit from functioning requiring a RMA call because "the unit will not power up."

Just some suggestions in hopes that it will help other folks and Fitbit. 

Thanks!  All three of my family members have fitbit watches and we all love them.