Feedback about features on Sense 2

[--Smeagol--]

Seeing as my original post was buried in the Google assistant thread, even though its unrelated. I've decided to post it again.

I purchased the Sense 2 for my wife. We were aware that Google assistant would likely be missing (this is not our complaint), and she was ok with that (although I thought differently). 

To our surprise as you can imagine, we were shocked to learn that Google assistant isn't the only downgrade. Let me list the downgrades so that other users can save themselves some time. 

• No Google assistant.
• No WiFi (means software updates will take forever). 
• No Fitbit app gallery or access to 3rd party apps (this means no Deezer, Spotify or the likes).
• No music controls. That's right, there is no ability to even control the music playing on your phone. 
• No on wrist Bluetooth calling. 
• No Google wallet or Google apps out of the box (we did know about this before the purchase). 
• Inability to rearrange exercise shortcuts.
• No snore detection 

I'm sorry but to me (and my non techie wife) this is an outright downgrade to the Versa 3 my wife was currently using. That's right the Sense 2 is a downgrade even on the Versa 3. Fitbit should be ashamed of themselves, they are acting no differently to a scam artist and will not be getting a dime more out of me.

Good luck and think twice before parting with your money.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[datalore]

Yet another lack of communication because the gyroscope isn't listed on the specs page. Yeah, lap counting is very important to me and I need it on the watch. I can get fitbits fairly cheaply through my insurance, but even with the discounts they've lost me. It's a shame what Google is doing here. 

[t.parker]

@N8teGee "Although the company declined to give specifics, the Fitbit Sense 2 has an upgraded processor when compared to the original Sense. Combined with the new version of Fitbit OS, the UI is smoother, snappier, and more reliable." - my experience is totally different.

I did initial tests trying to find the framerate and will try to find good way of presenting my findings. For now what I see the framerate is oscillating mostly around 15 to 16fps. Some areas like Today app drops even below that (lowest was 10fps). It's worse than I observed on Sense which kept mostly 24fps. Not perfect but mostly stable (keeps impression of locked framerate). Some areas are less CPU hungry and render with 20 to 25fps. The problem is that I can't eliminate motion blur from my footage so my frame processor gets sometimes confused and adds additional frame or two (well, better for Sense 2 but may inflate framerate artificially) so need to solve that problem (most likely I will use different camera). The screen refresh rate is 60fps and screen refreshes from left to right (pretty much like mobile phone in landscape orientation). I can't speak for how the UI is written but it looks like the watch does a lot of other work on the UI thread (or there is no UI thread?) and that causes blocking and choppiness. The watch seems to be able to render 60fps but the workload between frames of animation seems to reduce framerate. There is not much going on on screen so I'm not sure what takes the CPU time (unless resources like images are unloaded when go offscreen and loaded when go onscreen?). The worst areas are Today app and scrolling through choices of exercises. Yeah, "smoother, snappier, and more reliable" my a** 😛

[N8teGee]

@t.parker Yes I thought that part was quite amusing too. Hopefully they manage to improve the fluidness, as it doesn't look like a pleasant experience. I should add that I haven't tried one in hand, so all I'm going by are the videos I've seen online.

Would it be possible to test how much battery drain the cEDA causes, as we are told it may drain the battery quicker but I haven't really seen by how much. Thanks. 

[t.parker]

@N8teGee I'm testing the cEDA now but will take a few days probably to get some numbers out of it.

In the meantime I ran the local Parkrun and just a short analysis of that run:

The GPS quality is good, the distance measuring not so much (cut 100m on almost 5k route (4.87 is actual length). I had issues with UI, it's very confusing and slow. Too many taps to do simple things. GPS on the other hand connected within 2-3 seconds (I did 3 runs, warmup, race and recovery, analysis is from the race, all connected quickly today). The notifications on steps and active zone minutes drive me crazy. The vibration is endless (almost 10 seconds of vibration!). All today's runs sum up to 1 hour and that ate 10% of battery which is better than yesterday's experience. Who knows, maybe the manual isn't wrong but that needs more testing. cEDA probably doesn't run during activities.

Edit: there is one more annoying thing. The screen always fades in after turning wrist to wake up the watch which takes about second. You want to see data during run? Wait for screen to fade in.

Edit2: this cEDA starts driving me crazy with all those notifications... 🤣 

[asiayeah]

I raised a feature request to support 3rd party apps in https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/Support-third-party-apps-and-clock-faces-and-Sen...

Please kindly vote for it if you are interested.

[Tristannyc]

Oh wow.. they didn’t fix the heart rate at all. My Versa One has better readings than this. Someone really needs to compare the versa 1 and 2 against the newest Fitbits. I bet there would be a revelation that the old ones actually read better. I have an Apple Watch ultra and Fitbit versa on for a few days now and they are very close in heart rates. But if I tried the sense. It would be way off. 

[N8teGee]

@Tristannyc The HR sensor was fine until the introduction of "Pure Pulse 2.0" with the Sense/Versa 3. Fitbit acknowledged the issues with the Semse/Versa 3 but from all of the reviews I've seen it seems little has change.

[t.parker]

Speaking of heart rate. Here's one more test which is an evening walk:

This behaviour is something I expected as it was normal for the original Sense. My walking HR on Sense was always higher than captured by the chest strap. No surprise that Sense 2 inherited the same issue. Interesting that the HR shots up so suddenly, not sure why.

On this one, the GPS failed not because of connection issues (because there were none) but because of strange drifting. The pink route is made in Strava and shows approximately what the perfect route should be. A perfect route isn't possible but the closer, the better.

[N8teGee]

@t.parker Thanks for your thorough testing, I'm sure this will be very useful for those who suffered HR issues with the previous devices and were hoping the news ones would bring a fix.

The walking HR might as well be a randomly generated number from the looks of the chart. I wonder what is causing the issue as walking should be pretty straight forward. 

[halintx]

Wow. Almost made a BIG mistake purchasing the sense2.   Looks like its back to Garmin...  

[slepr]

With all the gloom and doom coming to light I have found a positive compared with my Sense 1. Notifications are nearly instant (1-2 seconds) and complete. By complete I mean all the notifications I see on my phone I also see on the Sense 2. With my Sense 1 it never got all of the notifications and would sometimes just suddenly show several hours old notifications all at once. Perhaps Bluetooth has improved with this new model. 

[PetG]

Thank you for that link!!  I really can't understand the marketing strategy here. Why remove features for other, older fitbits?? It's bad enough the new model Sense and Versa  are so featureless. It seems like fitbit is following the path of Stadia for Google

[t.parker]

@N8teGee the only reason I can think of that HR looks like that is that it accidentally locks on to my cadence and mixes up HR readings with the noise caused by foot stomping onto the ground. If I take cadence and HR and overlay the data it looks like this:

 HR readings jump very close to the cadence. Lower HR may be a result of an algorithm that averages the data and additionally, there are many places with cadence 0 (steps too slow or not at all, I filtered that out for clarity of chart). This isn't an uncommon behaviour but usually, it's observed during running (more cadence noise due to higher cadence and more ground contact force). I've observed on some of my past runs on original Sense that HR equals my cadence in some places. All the watches can experience that but I would find it bizarre if walking could be affected by cadence, too. It's just my guess but the original Sense wasn't good at filtering noise and I believe the algorithm may be looking for regularities in the signal to lock on to.

[pabsurdy]

So like the only thing giving me a bit of hope here is they are still advertising hundreds of apps to choose from.. either its completely false advertisement or coming soon ? 

 

[t.parker]

@pabsurdy this is a false advertising if there is no any indication that the feature isn't there yet. If I read that I expect the apps gallery to be full and ready for me. This is what ad says and this is what I expect. It doesn't say coming soon or anything else. This is example of false advertising. Knowing Fitbit it isn't done on purpose but out of ignorance and lazyness as this is a copy-paste from original Sense. They just don't know what they sell.

[N8teGee]

I imagine it won't be too long until this is reported to the relevant advertising standards regulator in relevant countries. There are strict rules (at least in the UK) regarding advertising things that are not true. 

[Jdsenter]

@--Smeagol-- add snore detect it is reported as not configurable on Sense 2.

https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Sense-2/Snore-report/td-p/5250059#M1252

[--Smeagol--]

@Jdsenter Ok added, thanks. 

[gtung3388]

i once to be excited and place pre-order for sense 2 .

Not see Fitbit response and have those at lease wifi connect n music control we be added ..

Saw folks add GPS, heartrate.... related BUT Fitbit not as expert as others  in the market..

GOOGLE , IF U WANT TO DUMP FITBIT AWAY , IT'S FINE , DONT LAUNCH NEW PRODUCTS ANYMORE , OK!!!!

[t.parker]

There is one more issue which seems to be inherited from early Sense. After opening Exercise app and selecting Run tye GPS is connecting. On original Sense the app would stay open for longer so user can make sure the GPS is connected and start exercise anytime. On Sense 2 the app stays open for a very short time and then goes back to watch face. Extension to that time has been implemented for the original Sense but it's not s part of Sense 2 software. As result, I had to open exercise app three times yesterday trying to get watch ready for tracking my race. It's only a few seconds the app is alive and then quits if user doesn't tap to start. Since it has been improved on original Sense it is a missing feature on Sense 2 (and it's as annoying as it was on Sense before a fix).