The Fitbit Community is a gathering place for real people who wish to exchange ideas, solutions, tips, techniques, and insight about the Fitbit products and services they love. By joining our Community, you agree to uphold these guidelines, so please take a moment to look them over.
We should all ask them on their twitter feed https://twitter.com/FitbitSupport when they will fix it. This will generate a lot more visibility than here.
I believe they see this interest and think that we will buy the more expensive frackers that have GPS tracking; i.e. The blaze and surge.
Truth is, all of the trackers Fitbit makes should have GPS work the same way the Fitbit blaze works. They should use the Phone GPS and altimeter.
A suggestion to Fitbit; you used to be cool. That's what makes people loyal to you. You aren't cool anymore because it is plain to see that this is not a technical hurdle, but strictly 110% an artificial barrier to our needs in order to facilitate sales. This sort of thing gets you money now, but it speaks to the culture of Fitbit and the future culture of your customers. Your loyal customers will leave, your new customers will be fickle and easily persuaded by the next best thing.
What would be easier Fitbit; to be a company that does what's best for its customers to build brand loyalty and devotion. Fans of your company that will buy your next tracker because it is more functional and to differentiate themselves from other fans who have the older fracker. Or are you going to be a company handcuffed into finding the next best thing followed immediately after with the next best thing to be followed up with the next best thing, etc.
I find the companies that explode in popularity are the ones whom the end user can't plainly see how you make your money. The customer only sees value and develops a need to pay the company back in loyalty.
I don't see that anymore from Fitbit. That's why today I bought an Apple Watch...... I hate myself for doing it, but I want to ride my **ahem** bike and have it tracked and still have a stylish watch to tell time. I hate apple, because of the same reasons I'm hating fitbit now. The difference is that Apple can afford to release products every quarter. Heck, the second Apple Watch can be third hand if garmin comes out with something new.
Basically, I was married to Fitbit. Now I'm divorced, and actively dating looking for a fitness tracker to ride into the sunset with.
Seriously, Fitbit HQ are you readng this?! @WiserOne makes great points! You guys are at a tipping point and listening to your users would be wise!
There are workarounds to add GPS to our bike rides and that's a clear sign that the software CAN support it! It will take your programmers a day's work at most to add "bike" to the already walk/run/hike. We know adding GPS to a bike ride is totally possible - we are already doing it.
What is also important to know is that we, Charge HR users, are very confortable with our sleek/unobtrusive watches and don't want to opt for the Surge/Blaze just to be able to get GPS bike stats.
Please enable cycling on the Surge! Just bought mine and I would think the distance, body weight and elevation gain should be enough to track this pretty effectively...thanks!
I just got a Charge HR. None of the charts that I saw comparing features even mentioned biking, and I figured it would be one of the options because I have never used a fitness app that doesn't have biking as an option. So far, I do like the Charge HR, but I really really really wish it had an option to track biking!
I am using the Charge HR with the fitbit ios Apple app. the current app includes only walk, hike or run as options for exercise. It would be wonderful if you would expand the app to include outdoor cycling. The combination of the Charge HR and ios app currently track all the necessary inputs. The app can be modified for ourdoor cycling to calculate speed (mph/kph) instead of Pace (i.e. stride). You may also need to adjust the calorie burn calculations. This small enhancement would really make the product valuable.
Additionally, there are hundreds of suggestions/requests/comments on this fitbit community forum asking for the cycling capability. This option requires no modification of the fitbit device and only an application enhancement in the ios app.
Why isn't this a quick update to fitbit? My Fitbit HR tracks my movement, my speed on the bike, but it gets registered as running - like I'm running 4 and 5 minute miles for 15 miles. C'mon guys, just add it as a selection so that our activities biking / cycling get sorted and acknowledged correctly and doesn't mess up with our running statistics. Thank you.
Was perplexed to find this option missing on the Charge HR. Given that the Charge HR can auto-detect outdoor bike rides, it seems like a no-brainer to add "Bike Ride" to the activity options for tracking. Would love to see this in a future software update.
Today as a hack, I use "hike" to track "bike". Then export to Runtastic, and change activity type to bicycle (because Runtastic lets you do that, when the Fitbit app doesn't - like if they didn't want you to do it).
I have a (somehow) positive news for all concerned by the lack of cycling in the Mobile app:
You start recording your bike ride as "Hike", like we do for the moment. But at the end, after you save the ride, you can edit the type of activity (directly on the phone) and switch to "Bike". And the activity will be seen as Bike in the Activity Log.
@gophren , I don't see on the phone the possibility to edit on the phone the type of activity. This is the screen I get. Where do you edit it? Can you screenshot what you do?
I am using the Windows 10 Mobile app. I recorded a "Hike". As you can see, I have an "Edit" button at the bottom of the screen (the pencil). I used it to change from "Hike" to "Bike". It does not let you enter anything else in the activity type besides hike, run, walk and bike:
And it seems that excercise editing was implemented in the last app release, 2.10:
05/31/2016
2.10
The new design of the Fitbit dashboard is now available for preview
Exercise editing
Later Edit: Maybe you actually need some GPS data on your activity, I see in your screenshot that your "Hike" was 0 seconds long. Try to record a few seconds with the GPS in green and see then.
The outdoor bike tracking is not working and they have been trying to fix the problems for months ... But meanwhile I am not getting what I paid for ... for my Alta !!
Join us on the Community Forums!
Community Guidelines
Learn the Basics
Join the Community!
Not finding your answer on the Community Forums?
Go to the Help Site
Contact Support