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Seems like a pretty clear case.
Praise the GDPR.
Even in the US, the GDPR means companies have to at least pretend to care about data privacy,
A company I worked for a few years ago quite literally "noped" out of GDPR compliance by spinning off all its overseas business into a new company and walking away from the market entirely. That was a pretty big sign for me that the company was a piece of shit and when I started looking for a new job.
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The monetisation of user data is really enshittifying products. At this point I wouldn't be against if a company would find it a "feature" to not require you to login/make an account and share data.
News about Amazon streaming this morning: 👋
Mullvad has that feature. They generate an account for you. No password.
Mullvad make watches now!?
I have two Fitbit Charge devices. I took two months off using it. I went to go use them, one will simply not boot (turns on for 1/2 seconds and shuts off) and the other now will only stay charged for a few hours and dies. I'm not sure what's going on here, but it seems suspicious.
If you left them with their batteries empty then the batteries are likely actually dead.
If you're going to leave a device untouched for an extended period, make sure the battery is atleast 50% or more full before doing so.
IIRC you can't turn off Fitbit devices. You have to drain the batteries completely so that the device powers down by itself. Utter shit design, but it is what it is.
You can't turn fitbits off (at least the fitness trackers). They are their on or flat (as far as I'm aware anyway)
Ahh, if so that is a rather awful design choice
I have owned probably a dozen Fitbits over the years.
Not coincidentally, I own a dozen dead Fitbits.
Honestly you are better off buying the cheapest Chinese product on Amazon. Fitbits are pure fucking diarrhea in wearable form, and I eagerly await the class action lawsuit.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twelve times, uh, you can't get fooled again.
Lol. They weren't all mine. I bought one for wife, a couple more for wife's family. They didn't all die at once, each lasted about a year and I'd replace them until I was like... wait a minute
Is wooshock learning?
Can't get fooled again.
A few years ago I bought a xiaomi fitness tracker for 30 euros. Used every day until I got bored of it. Left it in a drawer for a year, tried it recently, still works just fine.
Not that I'd necessarily recommend getting one, but if the battery on yours is already dead, I agree that is suspiscious. Sounds like it's by design.
Those xioami fitbands are great for the price, if you want basic tracking without needing your phone or just want a really cheap smartwatch that can control music or your cameras shutter.
But their battery also doesn't last more than 2 years if you charge it every 3 days. At least the 2 and the 4 died within 2 years for me.
3 days? I've owned the Mi band 1, 2 & 4 (still on my wrist), and only need to charge it once every 20+ days. The only reason I upgraded from the 2nd one was that the LCD was starting to be too dim. Granted, I turn off every tracking feature that I can.
I did use the heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking features. Without those they indeed last a few weeks.
Yes, I realize that my use case might not be the norm. I just dream of a smartwatch that just gives me the time and proper notifications, without the added cost and bulk of all the tracking features.
Edit: I was just surprised that the battery duration difference would be so drastic.
The heart rate function is the most battery draining of all. You can change the frequency of it to make it less taxing.
I don’t think any Fitbit I’ve ever owned has lasted more than a year. The good thing about the company is that they have a pretty good warranty program and as a result, I haven’t paid out of pocket for a new device in over three years.
I have a charge 4. People don't like it because it has no colors, I don't like it because it has no sdk to support making new apps on it. Apparently it has very good sensors that I would have loved to manipulate and use for my own personal use cases. But alas.
Looking to buy a new tracker soon since it helped me understand my heartbeat and sleeping patterns better. I'm looking for something FOSS where it's easy to make and share custom widgets.
Yeah, once my current versa 3 inevitably breaks, I’m jumping ship. I’m most likely going to Garmin, since other choices are kinda limited and don’t want to charge my watch every day. I feel like the sleep tracking has never worked well for me on Fitbit. I don’t know if it’s a function of having a low heart rate or it just doesn’t work well, but there are nights that I’ve gotten terrible sleep or not slept at all and it thinks I slept for 6+ hours because I just laid there.
My charge just died on me(again. I've had three firbits while my wife's apple watch is still going strong). I was planning on moving to Garmin (maybe they are better than Fitbit/Google about data privacy), but my wife talked me into seeing if my Fitbit was under warranty. It's not, but they offered me 50% off any fitbit on their site.
This obviously makes my decision harder. I can get a new inspire 3 for $49 or I can try to figure out which Garmin out of their 1000 variations is right for me. Most of the ones that interest me are ~$300+
With Garmin, you’re paying a premium because you’re not the product.
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/garmin-forerunner-series/
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/garmin/
That definitely makes the decision harder.
This probably makes me sound like a simpleton, but their breadth and depth of models is paralyzing and having never owned any smart watch other than a fitbit basic charge-style band, I dont even know where to start. And $300+ dollars puts it out of impulse purchase range.
They sort of have watches categorized by sport/purpose if you know why you want a watch, but most of them do basically the same stuff and the main differences are battery life, appearance/build, and whether it has GPS.
I wanted something I could use to navigate and track multi-day backcountry hikes, so I got a Fenix. My wife wanted to go for a run without bringing her phone with her, so I got her a forerunner. There are lots of options, but even the cheapest watch is good enough if you just want to track steps and basic activities.
It's a shame that most popular watches aside from Fitbit are locked to a specific phone-ecosystem (e.g. Apple Watch doesn't work with Android)
I use a Garmin myself which I like but it's UI isnt intuitive enough for me to recommend it to people like my parents
while it doesn't support Fitbit models so it's pretty useless in this particular case, look into Gadgetbridge. it does support lots of different smartwatch brands, and helps you keep all the data on-device without phoning home.
Works perfectly with Mi Band 3. The UI is little rough, but you rarely have to use it after the initial configuration. Everything just works.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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