Sense battery short life after Android update

[bonstar]

My sense seems to be losing 50% of battery per day after the recent Android update on my pixel 7.

Syncing also seems to be sporadic, with many notifications and calls being delayed or missed entirely.

Is there a patch coming to address these issues?

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Guy_]

Hi @bonstar - a syncing issue can easily cause excessive battery usage.

The best way to verify this is to turn off the phone's Bluetooth for a day and see if you get better battery usage.

And if so check what is causing the syncing issue.

A first step could be 

• Turn off any other Bluetooth devices
• restart the watch.
• On the phone remove the Bluetooth entries, logout of the Fitbit App and swipe off the active window and in Android clear the storage cache and force stop it and then restart the phone.
• Login to the Fitbit App and wait for any pair, link or Fixit prompts and sync. The Fitbit App should remake the Bluetooth entries but you will need to setup on-wrist calls again.

If there is a problem with no Bluetooth entries run the "+ Set up a Device" and replace.

[bonstar]

Thanks. I've already attempted that and no luck - the issue persists.

It's almost as if the connection is being lost due to power savings or something - when I open the app I can always sync, but sometimes it's hours out of date. Further, when I try to re-sync it will usually fail the first few attempts before finally connecting.

This only started happening within the past few weeks around the time when I updated to the latest Android version.

[Guy_]

@bonstar - thanks, it seems battery savings may have been turned on during the update so the Fitbit App or associated services is no longer running in background.

[bonstar]

I checked that too but the Fitbit app battery usage is set to "unrestricted".

Seems more like a bug.

[Guy_]

@bonstar - at least Bluetooth and location services need to be unrestricted too. And of course not tuned off manually.

Here is general help Why won't my Fitbit device sync?

[bonstar]

Thanks. Those permissions according to the help page all look good too though.

I'll try changing the android Bluetooth service itself to "unrestricted" and see if that helps.

[bonstar]

No luck, still disconnecting and having sync issues.

[Guy_]

@bonstar- to be sure it is just a syncing issue, see when you get an incoming message that the notification appears on the phone's status bar, in which case the Fitbit app should send it immediately to the watch.

Is it possible that the source app on the phone is not generating a notification immediately when a new message is available? EG. For email that it is only checking for new emails sporadically.

See also How do I get notifications from my phone on my Fitbit device? there may be some other clues in there.

it might be a good idea to chat via the Fitbit App, click profile photo, Help & Support, Contact Customer Support, to make them aware of the issue and in case they know about it, how to resolve it.

[bonstar]

to be sure it is just a syncing issue, see when you get an incoming message that the notification appears on the phone's status bar, in which case the Fitbit app should send it immediately to the watch.

Yeah that's not happening, and I won't receive the notification for hours afterwards (if at all). If I then open the Fitbit app and try to force a re-sync it will typically fail the first few attempts.

One day later and the watch is down 50% again. I'm positive that there is a bug as the watch was fine up until the software update.