Battery consumption

[egovp]

Hello,

It seems to me that the FitBit app consumes the iPhone battery rather intensively. I have been monitoring that for several nights in a row, and here is what I found. For an overnight period, when no other apps/screen are actively using the battery, FitBit app is the only one with an estimated consumption of 12% / 10hrs or 1.2% per hour (see the picture below, 22:00-8:00 is the time when the phone was not used at all). This gives an estimate daily battery consumption of ~30%, which sounds quite a lot compared to any other background app (even Google Maps). As you may also see in the screenshot, the FitBit app actively works in the background for 2-3 min every hour.

The tech specs of my setup:

• iPhone:
  • new with 100% max battery capacity;
  • the latest iOS version;
  • background data is enabled for FitBit app;
• FitBit app:
  • the latest version;
  • "live data" option in Dashboard is disabled;
  • all notification functionality for the tracker is disabled;
• FitBit Charge 5:
  • latest firmware update as of today;
  • (if that matters) dynamic GPS.

The questions I have:

1. While I do not know how much data is streamed from the tracker to the app, I would like to query whether this is an expected battery consumption?
2. Since the tracker is able to store the measurements on-device for up to 7 days, and assuming that the battery consumption primarily comes from the synchronization with the tracker, are there any adjustments that can be made to the synchronization frequency? (e.g. by having an option to choose once/day, twice/day, hourly, etc). I am personally not interested that much to have the actual data in the app every single minute, since I use it for post-exercise analysis mainly. Infrequent sync along with the manual sync option for the sake of saving extra 10-30% of the battery life daily would be a great alternative to have.

[Odyssey13]

Hi @egovp check this article for some tips on saving the battery of your Fitbit, which might help with the drain on your phone. If you don't use the notifications feature, you can always log out of your app and log in only when you wish to sync or check your stats.

[egovp]

Hi @Odyssey13 , thanks for your reply. That article does not seem to suggest any new steps on top of what I have already implemented. Also, I would not consider regularly logging out of the app as a potential solution. This would be a very questionable user experience. I would rather see this issue as something FitBit team should consider addressing.

I have tried one more experiment - disabling background sync for FitBit app at iOS level. Below are the results from another night (sleep is from 00:00 till 08:00). As one can see, the battery is almost unaffected. Having also this plot, I now see the previous behaviour rather as a battery leak.

[Odyssey13]

Get with customer support and let them know you have images to share and have tried the basics to resolve this on your own.

Chat or phone is said to be fastest.  https://myhelp.fitbit.com/s/support?language=en_US 

[egovp]

@Odyssey13 thank you the directions! I have contacted the customer support. They confirmed that the manual sync is the immediate solution, and recommended to post the findings to the "Feature Suggestions" forum. The latter is apparently more likely to be read by the FitBit dev team. The post is here - https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/Configure-synchronization-frequency-of-FitBit-iO... , please, feel free to comment or upvote.