Sense not syncing

[_pauls]

So I bought my first Sense back in October last year and it worked fine until a week ago when suddenly it just died - plenty of battery but no sign of life. Nothing on screen, no flickering sensors, charging it fully made no difference, oddly enough the haptic button would buzz when you let go after holding it for more than 20 seconds or so but otherwise nothing would happen at all.

Amazon sent me out a replacement which I've had for around a week and now suddenly bluetooth has died on it.

It last synced earlier this morning but then started to say it couldn't sync. Tried turning bluetooth off and on on my phone - no joy, tried restarting Sense - no joy, tried unpairing it from my phone in the app and re-pairing it but still the same probel, tried "forgetting" it from the bluetooth menu on the phone and re-pairing and the sense doesn't appear in the list of available devices.

Tried to pair on a tablet and then a laptop and still no sign.

Did a factory reset on the fitbit and ran the setup wizard again - finds the fitbit and runs through the setup process OK (presumably because it is connected via WiFi) but once installed and apps are updated I'm back to the can't sync.

Tried changing the clock face - error saying it can't communicate with device.

Now trying again to reinstall and it says "Sense found" but then just sits on "connecting" until it times out.

So... another dead sense. Not impressed given the cost of the thing.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[Marrrmaduke]

@_pauls can you please share your phone model and OS version?

[_pauls]

It's a Pixel 5 running Android 11.

After spending the best part of an hour talking to support and re-hashing all the steps that I'd already done, I was told that the Pixel 5 is not on the supported devices list as it is too new and that it might stop and start syncing from time to time so I should sit tight and wait a few months until it is officially supported.

While I understand that it isn't really possibly to certify against all new devices as soon as they come out this is clearly a "get out of jail free" card because as soon as he asked that question there was no interest in finding out why it wasn't working. I had been running a Sense with this phone since October perfectly well until a hardware failure on my last one, and "it might stop and start syncing from time to time" is hardly a very scientific explanation as to why it doesn't work. I've worked in IT and development for 25 years and one of the best ways to ensure that your products do work with the latest versions of devices is to thoroughly investigate when there are reports that things don't work.

I'm amazed that fitbit hasn't got any form of diagnostics built into the device that can indicate things like connectivity status, sensor status etc - the approach always just seems to be "turn it off and on again", "turn bluetooth off and on again", "turn your phone off and on again" and "do a factory reset".

Now as luck would have it, one of the steps that we went through obviously had some effect because I was able to get it to connect to my Samsung tablet which I hadn't been able to earlier. With the advice that I should use my tablet instead of my phone until Android 11/Pixel 5 was supported I left the call knowing I wasn't going to get anywhere further.

Encouraged by the fact that I was at last able to get a device to find the Fitbit I tried totally uninstalling the Fitbit software from the phone, rebooting and reinstalling the software and then factory resetting the watch again, and hey presto I was back in business.

Finger's crossed it stays this way.

[Marrrmaduke]

@_pauls i was just about to recommend factory reset and clean install. I am on Pixel 5 and it works well. 😄

[CLynnB]

I reinstalled the fitbit app on my android tablet and rebooted it but it didn't want to sync still. So after hours of trying things I went with the 10 second hold for restarting the watch and watching for the fitbit logo to appear and then low and behold all syncing came back to life (not the factory reset). This all started with the Fitbit update.