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128 comments and over 450 uncontested this is the most popular request by far, how hard is it to add some more or create an app to generate a custom one?? Just purchased the charge and did not realize how few faces there were...seriously makes me think of returning it.
Well, I found my best personal solution was switching from slashed to TARGET. It has a readable time, and if I squint with my readers off I can actually usually read the steps. You can tap on the clock face to move from heart rate, to steps, to zone minutes.... it will stay on your last clicked one, and since steps matter most to me I leave it on steps but can easily tap to see heart rate. Out of all the clock faces I am finding it most useful and less abrasive with less colors on it. I highly recommend trying it.
That's the one I use. But it's still way too easy to accidentally tap it off of steps. I'd rather have battery level, time, heart rate, and steps on one screen with no tapping. If I were within my return window, this would go back. I might just throw it on offer up and get rid of it. After having my screen go too dim on the charge 3 and dealing with these asinine clock faces on the charge 5, I'm about done with Fitbit.
Yes, and why do I get this “Unable to connect to Device” popup constantly 😡. It’s a great fitness tracker overall, but c’mon Fitbit, address these concerns, jeez. Stop ignoring the community!
I tried a few other faces (Target, Ice Cream) but none of the ones I tried showed me what I mainly want to see by default: The actual number of steps — not a progress bar. I always have to tap to the next screen to see the number (unless I'm missing something). So I'm back to Slashed.
Meanwhile, just an early warning to any new posters here: This thread will allow you to vent, but don't expect anything from Fitbit. No one there has indicated they are looking into these requests let alone has promised to make a change. They don't care.
Please, provide more clock faces for Charge 5! The ones you have out there are terrible! Too much colors, too busy without providing any necessary information! I used to have an analog clock face with everything necessary on my Charge 4. Why can’t we have at least the same designs for Charge 5?
I have changed from the Ionic smart watch to the Charge 5 tracker because I wear a traditional watch. I get sick of been asked (and called other things by friends) why I wear 2 watches at once. I had a workaround on the ionic, by making a custom face so all that could be seen were the stats (the time and date were the same colours as the background). This said, I thought I'd go for the tracker this time to save the explanation (and being called a be***nd by my friends). I got my new Charge 5 yesterday and I'm gutted to find there are no 'faces' that are 'stat only - in fact most are far more 'watchlike' than the Ionic faces. I'd like a 'stat only' face which must be easy to do and I'm sure others have the same issue, I'd give up the fitbit over the watch.
As a nurse, a clean easy to read clock with seconds would be much appreciated. additional stats are great, but the fact that there is only a couple options that have seconds include is unfortunate.
The Luxe appears to have more elegant clock faces; the Charge 5’s seem to be all high energy/“yoof”/exercise focused. Obviously a difference in intended market, but it would be nice if some of the Luxe’s faces could be made available so you could switch them when you’re going somewhere posh.
Some nice clear analogue faces would be good - all the existing ones either hurt my eyes or are too noisy to make sense of.
Whoever approved all these "creative" abominations has had their way. Now please step them aside and let someone better at interaction design, functional graphic design and understanding customer needs take a crack at building clock faces that serious customers will want to use.
These are so comically poor, it boggles the mind how a mature organization can 1) have designed them in the first place, and 2) have shipped them without reliable customer testing to iterate and ensure acceptance. My grapes are sour.
I too have settled on Target as the least of all evils, but I hit exactly the same problem as others. Unreliable activation of the display confounds use of the clock face, because tapping is overloaded to both mean "activate" and "rotate" readouts.
Whereas I always want HR to be showing, it never is, because the display has always been somehow tapped at least once and not a multiple of 5 since HR was last showing. That would be funny if not true.
Therefore, every time I want to read heart rate, I have to lift my wrist, assess the current WRONG state of the readouts, and tap, tap, tap tap. to get to mine.
But wait, since tap response is not real-time, over-rushed tapping leads to overshooting and missing the target! So around the block again, but slowly this time:
After all that, my heart rate is probably 10 higher than it should be, because I'm so pissed that the best face is still stupid, and the other 22 are slaps in the customer face while the wannabe "designer" goes home thinking they're some kind of clever edgy artist. I have news. Go back to design school and get your money back. Then go get a human factors degree or work in tech support for a year or two. Then come back and knock out, I don't know, maybe FIVE usable clock faces. If the marketing guy or the big boss says "I want them to be more exciting and challenging" have a spine and explain that usability comes first. If that doesn't work then prove it with testing. Somebody has to advocate for the paying customer.
Btw I want my Charge 4 back.
Anyway here's my fantasy reply from customer support. Mind you, this is not real, I just want to read and make like happy before turning in.
"To all customers wishing for more utilitarian clock faces: we hear you and agree that more options would be great. In particular, we'd like to provide more clock faces that have straightforward, clean, and orderly layouts; including some that provide popular subsets of information persistently, like heart rate and steps. Our design team is taking this input to heart (no pun intended) and is getting to work on even more useful, elegant, and free clock faces. Stay tuned!"
Very well said. The only issue here is you have a great rant that’s falling on deaf ears as you myself and others have been posting and have yet to get a single response to this from fitbit and as others have stated this for myself will be my last Fitbit product as I have paid full price for a device that only works have the time and then seeing it go below what I paid is a joke all the best
Yeah and the really sad part of it all is that apparently they don't read these message boards for feedback/support. You have to contact them directly for that. In reality, this is the very place they should be interacting with the community! This is where people voice their opinions, provide feedback, etc. Why in the world isn't their support team here?
Yup trash is an understatement with the Fitbit 5 I was hoping for more my fault in always trying new tech as I have learned from this. Apple seems to be the way I will be going next. Fitbit should really consider a new Fitbit and provide all the charge 5 owners new devices. What a joke
It really does seem ridiculous that instead of focusing on a handful of the most practical clock faces and then adding the artsy & fun ones later, they focused on the least useful clock faces and ignored pleas for literally any improvement to the offerings.
I predict new faces in April. Not because we've been asking for better options since the Charge 5 was released, but because April is when they finally put out new faces for the Charge 4. They'll take a victory lap, and we'll think they listened to us users.
Here is where at least there getting feedback from real users if their product and they seem to just ignore us. Fitbit sold to google and put its Users to the side
Bad move
------------
I have see advertisements with the Fitbit 5 at best buy with a different clock face which isn’t available I posted the picture and even some mods where looking into it and couldn’t find it. But I would take that over all the crap option we have now.
Very well said. The constant tapping to get to the right stat desired is an unconscionable design flaw. For the same price this sells for, one can buy an entire cell phone that has a much faster processor, higher resolution /larger display, and way more complicated software. My point being that, for the price we pay, the software and screen layouts should be flawless.
Creating additional clock faces requires a miniscule amount of additional coding. The fact that there are not more functional options, based on customer feedback, is just asinine.
Target and slashed are the only two barely useable faces. One of them doesn't even utilize the color display, and the other puts everything at a stupid slant and cuts off the bottom of the time.
I'm half tempted to smash the thing to pieces and mail it to their CEO with a note as to why I will never buy a Fitbit again. I was already bitten by the charge 3 bug that updated and made the screen too dim to read.
In agreement with other users. A few simple dials with all the statistics without hour cuts would be enough. Even the progressive dial, would it be possible to have in other colors? maybe simple all white? I like the charge 5, but really dislike actual dials design. Hopefully, thanks.
Btw I was referred to this page from another site. I did not realize until now that this is part of a feature voting system.
So VOTE now - upper left corner, if you have not already.
Fitbit is apparently not engaging in the discussion because attention is channeled through their standardized triage process, with the latest message appearing with status at the beginning of each thread . Statuses include:
- New (5)
- Reviewed by moderator (2100)
- Under consideration (150)
- Released (450)
- Not currently planned (1110)
In other feature suggestion posts, the message accompanying a change to "Under consideration" sounds almost like the dream response in my rant. That is promising.
So I'd hereby like to retract my rant, and apologize for the insults thrown in the heat of the moment. Frustration got the better of me.
A short survey would indicate there's a good chance of getting this solved. If you sort all "Reviewed by moderator" by "Hot", this post is #12 out of 2100. I believe that "Hot" is a quantified rate up upvotes.
If you sort "Reviewed by moderator" by "Top", this is #8 of 2100. "Top is total upvotes. Oddly, most of those ranking higher are quite old and seem to have some associated legal/health risk. So maybe FitBit's lawyers prevent moderators from telegraphing any attitude towards them.
So by either measure, this issue as high on FitBit's radar as any in the 2100 "Reviewed by moderator" category. The next threshold would be to join the 150 "Under consideration" items.
Now, of those, all but one date back to 2020. That's bad news for those people, but not necessarily for us, because it implies that recent suggestions are decided, one way or the other, before too long.
So I want to give FitBit credit where it's due. They have a process for taking input, considering it, and even making the process somewhat transparent, short of debating or affirming the grief customers bring into the room.
Whereas I actually like this system now that I understand it, I think an improvement would be to present a brief written explanation of the triage process and current status of the issue before "post your comment" completes. Maybe that would eliminate the "they aren't listening anyway" vibe
that builds in an echo chamber that is absent of FitBit voices here on page 6.
For me, it would have shown me that I'm commenting in the context of a fairly rigorous process, as opposed to shouting at a brick wall, which is how it feels after parachuting in from a Reddit link.
Back to the issue of taps. I'll post a new suggestion and ask you to vote on it. But here goes, because it's relevant to this issue.
The "tapping" problem - hysteresis, overshooting, confusion - I mention above is clearer to me now after experimenting. Not only does it have to do with overloading the tap, but how the double-tap is still active when it should not be.
Let me preface by saying I'm ALWAYS confused how to simply look at the time. Why? because the watch does not always display when I lift my wrist. For example, I might be lying in bed reading, and my wrist is already upside down. I suppose you all know the exaggerated wrist-flip you try to get the darn thing to show. When that does not work, what do you do? Tap? Double tap?
If the watch was just on, 1 tap works. But after a while, you need to use 2 taps. That alone is confusing because the "right" way to activate it is a mystery.
Forget that 1 tap ever works, because it does not always work. So fine, always use 2 taps. This is consistent with the "go to clock" feature from anywhere in the UI - 2 taps. Perfect, I'll call this the SURE THING rule.
BUT, here's the problem. When you are already on the clock screen, looking right at it, 2-tap does NOTHING. I think the code that discriminates between a 1-tap and a fast 2-tap is still running on the clock screen. THIS is why rotating clock-face readouts is perverse.
1-tap is slow to respond because the code is waiting a timeout to determine if you're doing a 2-tap.
2-tap does nothing because you are already on the clock screen - the 2-tap's global function is pointless if you're already there.
I'll call this the 2-TRAP. Try these on Target clock face:
tap once = readout rotation (after a delay)
tap twice slow = two rotations (after delays)
tap twice fast = NOTHING
tap three times fast = one readout rotation. This is because the first two taps are eaten by the global function, and only he third is used.
tap four times fast = NOTHING
tap five times fast = one rotation, as above
tap 200 times fast = NOTHING
tap 201 times fast = 1 rotation
Now, here is the insidious case that I hit all the time:
Set "Target" clock face to HR readout.
Type for a while on a keyboard (this will undermine a wrist-flip actuation).
Tap twice, not necessarily fast, to actuate using the SURE THING rule above (OBSERVE: display ON, HR readout as expected)
Wait for display to timeout and go black.
Tap twice, again not fast, using SURE THING. (OBSERVE: display ON, rotates HR to STEPS: BREAKDOWN - I did not want STEPS)
Note that HR is 4 rotations from the current readout, and therefore should take 4 taps.
Tap 4 times fast, to get quickly back to HR (OBSERVE: BREAKDOWN - nothing happens due to 2-TRAP above)
Tap 4 times more slowly (OBSERVE: rotated to HR as expected.
Of course, if any two of the 4 taps are too fast, they will result in NOTHING, so you have to be deliberate in your timing. This is no time to rush, much as you might like to be done already.
So here is the suggestion I'll put in another post for you to vote on:
Improve Charge 5's 2-tap scheme to eliminate breakdowns.
In standby mode where 1-tap is valid for display, ignore any tap within N milliseconds of actuation by one tap. This will eliminate inadvertent readout rotation when the user employs 2-taps as a surefire method of display. A proposed value for N might be 2X the 2-tap timeout.
In clock mode, disable 2-tap detection. This will eliminate unexpected null operations when the user taps quickly in order to rotate readouts quickly. It will also increase maximum UI response and speed of rotation as the 2-tap detection timeout is removed from processing.
I believe that if these tap scheme was implemented, I'd be happy enough with the Target clock face, because I think it would remain on heart rate as I wish. That's issue brought me to this forum in the first place.
”So I want to give FitBit credit where it's due. They have a process for taking input, considering it, and even making the process somewhat transparent, short of debating or affirming the grief customers bring into the room.”
Happy customers is very much a matter of perception. Any process of customer request evaluation needs to be transparent and not require a forum user to intervene and try to explain it. An example of transparency….. hit 500 votes and you win management review and reply.
Fitbit has failed! They have left customers here to sit and stew. With nothing official being returned.
For the “cost” of a single post…
1. From company management (not a moderator)
2. Giving detail of where this request lies. Customer perception could be completely reversed from the dumpster where it currently resides.
yes, we will all be very happy if new clock faces magically appear in a future update. But how many of us will continue to use the C5 simply because of the financial commitment of its purchase. I won’t quickly forget being left to sit and stew, when the time comes to purchase a new device.
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