Seems to be a combination of hardware and software. Here is what I have done so far to find out WTF is wrong with this product:
I have two devices, -both are niew- Alta HR. They both fail to show charge consistently since niew out of the box. The first thing I noticed is that they charged at different speed, but I thought it was because (maybe) from the factory there was some test charge residue.
Once they both asked for charging (note: they did not drain at same time) I tested with three different chargers including a computer USB charge ... until today early morning I left a rant in the support knowledgebase and in another post, blaming the hardware. But then one of the two (apparently discharged) AltaHR showed full battery immediately when connected again to a charger. The other device reacted similarly but not with full charge, that shows it maybe was acting up discharged when it really was not. The last two symptoms are clearly software issues.
Then of course the random battery display hints at an almost-obvious software issue. I don't have enough information to diagnose what's really wrong but again, I am the customer, right? this thing should work, otherwise I expect that Fitbit takes ownership of the quality issue and addresses it in a professional and transparent way.
And probably a large amount of the user community would gladly help solving it, including myself
What is unacceptable is that in the support and community pages Fitbit pretends the user is responsible for preventing and fixing this issues when it happens, ignoring the fact that if such a large amount of users have the same problem, it means there is something wrong with the hardware and/or the software.
If you go to the support page, is ridiculous to pretend the connectors are dirty when a device acts like that out of the box, and even after usage. As an example: Jawbone (competition) has always had exposed electrodes for charging and never had an issue with that unless you really get it dirty.
(as a side note: Jawbone screwed up with the design of their bracelet, it breaks too easily and does not latch well. As an idea, maybe someone should buy both companies and make one single product out of the two?)
