Google's overheating safety update for Fitbit is tanking battery life

Exactly a month ago, Google pushed out a mandatory update to certain Fitbit Sense and Fitbit Versa 3 smartwatches it had detected were at risk of overheating. Owners of devices that received the update were eligible to receive $50 from Google as compensation, which sounded like a good resolution to impacted Fitbit fans.

But it turns out it may not have been such a great deal after all. The Fitbit forum and subreddit have been peppered with posts from owners of the smartwatches who have seen the update decimate their battery life, in some cases making the wearables all but useless.

“Before doing the update my battery would last about 5 -6 days,” wrote one user on the official forums. “Now since doing the update it lasts less than a day. That's with everything turned off too (eg. Notifications, snore detection, vibrations etc).”

This triggered a host of similar horror stories in the replies. One reported receiving a low battery warning just hours after charging to 100%, while another stated their device’s run time had dropped to 17% in less than 24 hours.

“I can't be charging it every day, and it's unacceptable to say a forced firmware update, due to a battery defect with their product, should be able to have this affect [sic.],” the user added

“I had to charge mine twice in one day and it cannot even make it through the night now. It is unusable,” responded another.

It’s a similar story on Reddit with less than 24 hours being the norm. “Drains from 85% to 35% in 3hres”, wrote one owner.

“I went from getting 3 days to barely 24 hours after the update,” writes another. “It's insane to me that a company's response to a battery recall can be to make the product basically unusable.

“Imagine if a car company could make a car's max speed 15mph in response to an airbag recall.”

An extreme drop

To be clear, the support page for the firmware update does mention that battery life will be impacted.

“The update will improve the stability of the device's battery performance and reduce the risk of the battery overheating,” the text reads. “As a result, the battery will last for shorter periods between charges and you may need to charge your device more frequently.”

But given the extreme drops in battery life that impacted users are experiencing, it feels safe to assume that Google wasn’t expecting this big a drop when the update rolled out. A change from five to six days to one is a drop of over 80%, and the tone of the above text doesn’t indicate anything near that drastic.

We have reached out to Google to ask about the widely reported battery issues, and will update the piece if and when we hear back.

In the meantime, however, there is an early sign that the company is beginning to take the problem seriously. While the first moderator reply on the community thread at the start of the month just reiterates the official line that the firmware update could affect battery life, a second post yesterday from the same account encourages users to contact customer support.