Versa 4 - Disabled smart alarm and now battery tanks

[Simon720]

Hey

I've been using my Versa 4 for a few months now and I'm generally happy with it and the fact I can get usually 5+ days of battery

I decided to delete my smart/wake alarms the other day and since doing this, the watch now seems to drain battery a lot faster for some reason?

I tried to re-add them but it hasnt fixed the problem

Other things I've tried

• Restart watch (both holding power button, and using the shutdown option and turning it back on

• I've tried factory resetting the watch (without removing it from the app) and it prompts me to replace it

• I've tried deleting it from the app and then factory resetting it (interestingly all my settings still came back)

• I've tried switching away from my watch face and back to it (I dont use one that has the Sp02 reading)

Literally the only thing I originally changed was to delete my weekday and weekend smart alarm... Has anyone come across this before and have a fix for it?

[Guy_]

Hi @Simon720 - it is probably coincidental. and more likely a syncing / not syncing issue if the watch doesn't have a fault.

What you can try is turning off the phone's Bluetooth [when not doing a manual sync, you won't get notifications during this time] and see how well the battery behaves in standalone mode.

Make sure you don't use the GPS for any activity.

[Simon720]

Hi @Guy_ - I disabled Bluetooth on my phone to see if this'd help but it didn't fix the battery drain on it. I also don't use GPS. 

This only happened when I removed the smart alarms. 

Is there a way I can completely reset the watch to factory default? Every time I've tried it, adding it back to my phone brings back all my settings... I want to try to completely start it from scratch as if it was a new watch

[Guy_]

@Simon720 - try changing clock face first. And other steps, which can be done far more simply. SpO2 is measured for instance regardless of the clock face if you have the app installed.

A factory reset, either with button or from watch settings, isn't without risk and it would be strange that it would resolve your issue.

It is also important to know if the high drain is overnight, during the day or both and what you consider high drain. If both it could be a hardware issue, especially if the watch drains in hours, in which a replacement might be the solution but do more testing first.

[Simon720]

Hi, 

I don't use a watch face that shows Sp02. Drain is higher overnight normally because of the Sp02 measurements though (but this was the case before.. and I'd still get 5 days out of it)

The issue I'm having right now is just overall higher drain than usual which was just coincidentally timed with removing the smart alarms.

I haven't really been able to quantify the increase, but I charged it to 100% at 11am yesterday and by 6am it was at 60 to 70% 

I've changed the watch face to a couple of different ones but that hasn't helped (making sure not to pick ones that show SpO2 on the home screen)

Can you think of any other debugging steps? Is there a way for me as an end user to get debug logs from the watch at all?

[Guy_]

@Simon720  - that's not excessively high drain so the watch is probably ok.

Using an SpO2 clock face wont make much difference on your watch. It only shows one value for the night which is calculated anyway if you have the SpO2 app installed.

You can use the free SimpleClockPro clock face to monitor battery charging and draining which it keeps a log of and it displays continuously battery autonomy so you can see if there any changes at a specific times and in the watch log you get the battery condition recorded at midnight. This might help track down if there is something special happening at different times.

Tap on battery level to see autonomy (after a charge), tap on version to see watch log.

[Simon720]

@Guy_ Yeah I dont think the watch is faulty, I suspect its a weird software issue thats preventing the cpu from going into a low power state or something.

I'll take a look at that face you mentioned but in terms of logging, but im not entirely sure it'll help much. For example, I know drain is generally higher overnight because of the SpO2 measurements.

It's just really suspicious that it suddenly started draining faster when all I did was remove the smart alarms - feels like a software bug on the watch to me.

Do you think its worth reaching out to Fitbit directly?

[Guy_]

@Simon720- if you factory reset the watch without improvement using the default clock face the issue is most likely coming from elsewhere and it will prove it is nothing to do with the Alarms per se.

They may replace it with a refurbished one that might have other faults, so if you can it may be best to find the source of the issue first if your watch is working well otherwise.

With various versions of the Fitbit App there can be syncing issues which may have started around the time you deleted the alarms which can cause higher battery drain

Turning off Bluetooth on the phone puts the watch in standalone mode and may be see how long it lasts from a full charge without syncing for 3 days but then you will need to sync briefly to capture the data. You won't get notifications during that time.

In standalone mode if voice assistant was involved with setting the original alarms and was causing an issue, it will no longer be.

You can always chat via the Fitbit App, click profile photo, Help & support, Contact Customer support.