It is hard to beat Fitbit trackers for fitness tracking. They pack a plethora of health-focused features and can accurately track your key metrics. No wonder Fitbit wearables dominate our list of thebest fitness trackers. Among these, theFitbit Charge 5ranks at the top, with its big OLED display, light and comfortable design, and great battery life. Google made thewearable even better with its first-ever Feature Drop, adding expanded exercise support, new clock faces, and more. If you were looking forward to trying out the new features on your Charge 5 and were looking forward to installing the update, here’s some bad news for you.
Several Fitbit Charge 5 ownersreportthe latest v194.61 update has made their wearable unusable. They complain of excessive battery drain, with the fitness band eventually showing a black screen. Worse, there does not appear to be a way to stop the Charge 5 from auto-updating itself. You can block the Fitbit app’s access to the internet to prevent it from downloading the firmware, though this will cause data syncing issue.
If your Charge 5 is already bricked, there’s seemingly no way to revive it. Google’s support is providing a 35% discount code to affected customers who reach out. And even that is presumably being handed out to users whose wearable is under warranty. In some cases, users were sent a replacement unit, so you’re able to try your luck.
Google acknowledged the issue in a statement toAndroid Authorityand is looking into the matter:
We’re aware that a small number of Charge 5 users are experiencing problems with their devices. We’re currently investigating and will update users when we’ve identified the issue. In the meantime, users should contact Fitbit Customer Service at help.fitbit.com to help troubleshoot the issue.
Hopefully, the company will stop the roll-out of the buggy firmware until it finds out the root cause of the bug. There’s not much you can do until then except to ensure your Fitbit does not attempt to install the new firmware automatically.
