Battery draining issues

[mschocker7]

I'm on my second Surge. I had the first one replaced. When I got the replacement I had to charge it once every 6 days. Great.
For the last month it's only holding a 2 day charge at best.
Nothing has changed in the way I use it. I only use the HR when I exercise. But I haven't used it at all the last month. Don't use GPS either.
I'm so done with Fitbit. This is the 5th product I've had issues with!!!

Moderator Edit: Updated Subject For Clarity

[SunsetRunner]

Mine has been replaced twice.  Once with a refurbished unit and once with a brand new one in the box.  I have never gotten a full 3 days.  You are lucky to have ever gotten six.  Typically mine doesn't last 48 hours.  Occasionally I will take it off the charger fully charged at about 9am, and be able to make it to charging it at 8am on the second day without it dying on me during the night. Rarely it will make it to the third morning and die before I wake up but having recorded most of my nights sleep.

I have given up with tech support they haven't been able to resolve the problem.  If I completely close the app on my phone i often get a few extra hours to a total charge but it means not real data.  The app has gotten to be less of a battery drain over the last year and a half but personally I think the new app is worse and harder to read than the old one.  They keep coming out with new devices but all the improvements are in the app and they just don't work.  The adventure challenges are pointless, and don't notify you properly so I appearetly missed out on some diamonds last time I tried one.  It also doesn't sync the challenge when it syncs everything else so you need to open the challenge itself draining my phone battery and forcing an extra sync to my fitbit. 

But back to the Surge.  The horrible battery life is just the tip of iceburg.  Wait until you notice how horribly inaccurate it is.  The Heart rate is never correct.  I think the closest I have seen is within 5bpm.  almost always 10+ off.  The step count is insane.  I think mine now waits 30 seconds of walking before it starts counting steps.  I spent a day home sick and it is over 80 steps from my bedroom to my kitchen which I did a few dozen times a day (I was bored and there was liquid and snacks).  My phone tracked between 150-210 steps round trip.  My fitbit tracked less than 400 steps the entire day.  I would watch it while walking to the other room and see absolutely no change in step count. 

Don't get me started on the GPS. it is extremely slow to lock on, and when it does it is not accurate either.  Once I even forgot to stop it when I got in the car and discovered I can't go back and edit my workout removing the 2minutes in the car completely throwing off the rest of the data. 

I bought this unit because of the battery life, always visable watch, and water resistance.  Except the battery is horrible, the watch doesn't have an option to display seconds or day of the week even though there is plenty of space they never bothered to improve the faces, and it isn't water resistant enough to even wash your hands while wearing it.  Well maybe wash your hands if you don't splash the water to much and only wash your finger tips.  And don't forget to clean and dry it after or the non-breathing matterial will grow something and give you a rash.

All and all I really regret ever buying it.  I would throw it away but I spent too much on it to justify that.  I just don't pay much attention to anything on it but the watch anymore.  I gave up on the floors when I would walk up to the 6th floor of my office and get 2-3 floors one day and 10 the next.  Then I walk out side in the building in the winter and instantly get two more. 

I think come october I will be buying myself a MS Band 3 (if it comes out) or one of the new garmins. 

[RobertoME]

Hi there @mschocker7 and @SunsetRunner. Thank you so much for the feedback and pointed out all the experiences you found with your Surge. I'm sorry to hear all this happened even with a replacement. I'll make sure to pass your comments. All this helps us to improve the quality of our products.

For battery issues one of the most common causes beside how constant is used the tracker, can be the tracker is not receiving a proper charge, causing to last less days. I have mentioned some highlight regarding this issue on this other post for battery issues. If you want more information please take a moment to review it.

Whit the heart rate, experimenting with how high you place the tracker on your wrist. When you're not exercising, wearing the tracker just above the wrist bone--as you would a watch--typically works fine. However, moving the tracker up a couple inches can be helpful during high-intensity exercises or exercises that cause you to bend your wrist frequently. This depends also on the type of exercise  you are doing since in some occasions the exercise is not step based and the accuracy may be affected for this. Logging a manual activity could be an option for exercises of this type.

From the GPS side the environment you are in can affect the signal strength. For example, if you are running in an urban environment with many tall buildings, it may take your Surge tracker several seconds to get a fix on you and can affect also the map course of your exercise. In addition all Fitbit trackers are water-resistant, which means they are rain-proof and splash-proof and can stand up to even the sweatiest workout.

I'm not trying to change your point of view as I can understand your disappointment when you have gone through many issues as you mentioned on both posts. I just wanted to highlight some recommendations when this type of issues occurred, but we can consider also the Surge may be defective, so at this point if you have tried everything the best is to contact our Support Team as you did in previous occasions so they can review your device history and determine what would be the next step.

Once again thank you for the honest feedback.

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks for the not so quick response.  I have gone over these many times.  Some of the problems are easy to identify.

1) Tracker uses the same algorithms for counting steps as the other trackers without heart rate monitor which are commonly worn more loosely there for the unit is not calibrated for the additional sensitivity needed to be used while walking especially while checking the time or pushing a shopping cart. 

2) Battery life claims are assuming no movement, no light, no heart rate, no syncing, and classic bluetooth disabled.  Basically assuming the tracker is sitting somewhere next to its charger which is not practical but I guess good for marking (aka false advertising).

2a) Unit uses outdated technologies and bluetooth profiles to listen and send data even when profiles needed are not available on the remote device (ie GATT Server for example is a huge battery suck especially when the option is disabled on your device for notifications.  Very in efficient way to receive updated information). 

3) GPS, it is a weak antenna and doesn't use any of the quick gps standards.  Surprisingly the phone doesn't assist with this enabling for a quicker connection but in some ways I can understand that.  However the complete inability to edit any part of an exercise where GPS is used is just bad software design and has nothing to do with the tracker itself. 

Though one of my personal favorites lately has been the sleep tracking.  Not only is it very vague (far more than any other tracker out there) but entirely inaccurate.  Most of the time it will count my steps if I get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (though usually not as many steps as I actually took), but on the sleep tracking during that same time it often doesn't even record me as restless, the heck with awake.  Then as part of my almost daily routine is I get up, walk to the bathroom, then then kitchen, then back to the bathroom and start the shower then to my office to plugin my fitbit.  I then take my shower, get ready for work and grab my fitbit off my desk fully charged.  The problem however is I also then check my sleep on my phone, during which the unit syncs to my phone and the sleep is calculated as ending the same minute I did the sync.  One would hope the unit could tell I was awake with how much walking I did already (maybe the set of stairs would have given it away). But even if it didn't it should know that it is no longer on my wrist when it was plugged it, namely because it knows to shut off the heart rate monitor leds and I would like to think it knows that it can't be plugged in while physically still on your wrist, but I guess not.  I verified this this morning by plugging it in and then shaking it for 10 seconds (just a little longer than it needs to count steps) and watched it count the "steps" i was taking while the unit was plugged in and charging.  I mean SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL?  I get that these things are relatively stupid and the intelligence is all in the app but it honestly doesn't see an issue with tracking sleep and steps while it is plugged in? 

I need to stop now as these little update has made me late for work.