Versa Lite not displaying correct time, even after Factory Reset

[J.A.]

I'll keep this as brief as possible.

• On 8/20/2020, my Versa Lite was displaying the wrong time. At 10 AM, it was displaying a time of 9:50 AM. I assumed this was the result of having my phone (iPhone 6S; OS 13.6) on airplane mode for too long and reactivated the Bluetooth & Wi-Fi connections. Time shortly reset to the correct time after that.
• Six (6) hours later, my Versa Lite was displaying the wrong time again. It was displaying a time approximately 5 minutes behind what my phone was displaying. Upon starting the FitBit app on my phone, the time corrected itself.
• Three (3) hours later, my Versa Lite was, once again, displaying the wrong time. It was about 2 minutes behind. It corrected itself upon getting a notification from FitBit Support via Twitter.
• Two (2) hours later, I performed a Factory Reset, per recommended by FitBit Support. Almost immediately after completing the restart, my Versa Lite was 30 seconds behind the time of my phone. Loading the FitBit app this time DID NOT correct this.
• Overnight (approximately 7 hours later), my Versa Lite was a full 60 seconds behind my phone. Loading the FitBit app did not correct the time.
• A few hours later, I got a Facebook notification, and the time displayed was corrected.

I have no idea what the problem here.

I did look up all the related posts that I could search on the forums, but no one has reported anything similar to my problem. The only similarity between others who are reporting this issue and myself is that my Versa Lite is also about a year old in use. It seems that everyone who bought the model last year are experiencing this problem over the span of the last two weeks.

Can someone in the community please give me some insight, since a solution is clearly not possible, even after a Factory Reset?

[J.A.]

Interesting observation to report.

Upon loading the FitBit app this morning, I was prompted to allow it to run in the background by my system settings. I set it to ONLY WHILE IN USE, only to have the app tell me that it recommends having it run in the background for syncing purposes. I decided to keep the app open but put screen lock my phone.

The watch never fell out of sync with my phone while I was at work.

After my shift, I closed out the app and went about my afternoon. Five hours and a Facebook notification later, I notices that my watch was a full 2 minutes behind my phone again. The notification did not reset the watch to the correct time.

I loaded the app to type this update, and now the correct time is displayed again.

 I’m going to do some more observations and report my fundings here...

[Taudles42]

I have a Fitbit Versace 2. I charged it yesterday evening and since then it is showing the wrong time. How do I adjust it please?

[J.A.]

Well, here's what their e-mail Support sent me:

We appreciate your prompt response in letting us know about this issue with your Versa lite.

After reviewing our system, we can confirm that your Versa lite last synced was Aug 21 at 05:21 AM, tracking 380 calories and 141 steps. Taking into account the above everything seems to indicate that the device is working properly, therefore, in case you have any other inconvenience please let us know all the details that you can in order to keep investigating.

We look forward to hearing from you, so we can continue giving you assistance on your Fitbit Versa lite.

Sincerely,

Marie T.O and the Fitbit Team

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I don't think they actually know what's going on, so I'm going to keep reporting my observations here if I notice anything interesting. As far as the Fitbit Team goes, at least implied in this e-mail, as long as the device syncs health information to the internet, the ability to function as a watch properly isn't an issue.

[J.A.]

New obsession:

I noticed the watch was 2 minutes slower than my phone and attempted to sync it via forced notifications or by loading the app.

Forced notification didn’t work. Loading the FitBit app caused the Versa Lite to freeze.

 I thought this frozen state was the result of trying to sync the watch, but after 5 minutes, the device never restored functionality.

I reset the device, and the watch was about  6 minutes slower than my phone when I started typing this. As of this moment (approximately 3 minutes of phone typing this post), the clock reads the correct time again.

So why the freeze up?

[J.A.]

Since doing my factory rest, the Versa Lite has been consistent in WHEN is loses sync with my phone’s clock. It appears to happen either overnight when my FitBit is tracking my sleep and ops out of broadcasting notifications -OR- after some time has passed where I do not get any alerts on my phone that get pushed to the device.

Every morning, I wake up to see the watch is about 90 seconds late. This is the only consistent thing that I’ve observed since starting this log.

[J.A.]

New Discovery

While trying to resync my watch face to the correct time this morning (see previous post), I found it to be stubborn and not display the matching time. In the middle of this, I got a notification that my iPhone 6S was charged to the point where Low Power Mode was no longer needed. A minute later, the watch adjusted itself to the correct time.

I’m wondering if there is now a compatibility issue with the firmware of the Versa Lite and my iPhone when it is in Low Power mode. I haven’t had this kind of problem before, so I find it strange that this happened.

[J.A.]

This is more of a personal note than anything, but...

...yesterday's firmware update that changed Active Minutes into Active Zones didn't fix the watch feature not displaying the correct time. (If anything, it made things worse. I mean, when is having a BPM in the low 100s considered a relaxed heart rate?!)

[J.A.]

Well, this is interesting.

So I've been resyncing my clock function every morning before I go to work, and this morning was no different. And, much like last time, the watch face froze. Simple fix; just hard reset the Versa Lite.

Only this time, when the Versa Lite rebooted, it went BACK in time!  That's right. When it froze, it was sitting at 05:29:37. When it rebooted, the time displayed was 05:28:47. The time on my phone was 05:33:xx when this happened.

This is bad. This is VERY bad.

---

@J.A. wrote:

New obsession:

I noticed the watch was 2 minutes slower than my phone and attempted to sync it via forced notifications or by loading the app.

Forced notification didn’t work. Loading the FitBit app caused the Versa Lite to freeze.

 I thought this frozen state was the result of trying to sync the watch, but after 5 minutes, the device never restored functionality.

I reset the device, and the watch was about  6 minutes slower than my phone when I started typing this. As of this moment (approximately 3 minutes of phone typing this post), the clock reads the correct time again.

So why the freeze up?

---

[gkouril]

did this ever get resolved?  my versa lite is going backwards too

[J.A.]

Nope. I just got into the habit of loading the app and then having my Fitbit sync with it whenever I notice the time has slipped.

My theory is that Fitbit wants us to have the app running in the background at all time. The reason I came to this theory is because I have a watch face that has the option of displaying the current weather, which doesn't update at all unless it can sync with the Fitbit app. When I used that watch face for a few days with the app open in the background, I never lost sync with the current time. The moment that I stopped running the app in the background, time started slipping again.

[Angelpeace]

Around 12 Oct I had average 120 bpm and it tells me it was 100% below zones

0 minutes peak

0 minutes cardio

0 minutes fatburn

24 minutes below zones

The highest my heart rate climbed to was 133

[J.A.]

Well, this product is useless as a watch now. It lost 15 minutes of time overnight, and now it won’t even tell the correct time WITH the Fitbit app running in the background of my phone. Even after getting a Facebook alert sent to the device, the Fitbit Versa I have cannot tell time correctly.

[J.A. · Accepted solution]

This is going to be my last post on this matter.

Recently, Fitbit Support contacted me in order to correct this issue. My Versa Lite would lose 20 minutes DAILY by this point, making the watch function useless. Furthermore, none of my notifications were going through. Cell phone calls, text messages, Facebook notifications, etc. Nothing went through.

It was suggested that I update my phone's OS. This turned into a trial, as Apple kept telling me that my phone didn't have enough space on my phone to perform the update. I ultimately had to perform a factory reset on my phone and restored from a back-up.

After signing back into Fitbit and reconnecting my Versa Lite, the issue hasn't corrected itself. I'm lucky if I can sync the device once a day, but none of the phone calls or text messages I've received since the phone was reset were pushed to the device. I tried this both with and without the Fitbit app running in the background.

I am now convinced that after your Fitbit device is out of warranty, IT WILL FAIL BY DESIGN!

This is very disappointing. I had a Pebble Smartwatch for nearly 4 years before it couldn't find my phone and stopped functioning, and all it did was let me know when I got a phone call or what my most recent text message was. I was hoping that simplicity and high quality would be present when Fitbit bought the Pebble team. I am clearly wrong in that assumption; they probably got bought out to eliminate the (better) competition.

The device works great as a fitness tracker. But I need a Smartwatch that tells me the time and show my text messages. Fitbit clearly can't do that.