Assorted Initial Made Easy

Assorted initial

How's it going everyone? In this video I'm setting up a new Fitbit Charge 4 for someone and I thought I'd document the setup process. I got it for around 185 USD or 8,990 PHP on Lazada, one of the two leading Southeast Asian online retailers. This video won't be a review, the Charge line hasn't changed dramatically, just incremental refinements per generation. I just thought to make a little video of the setup process, Fibits are actually one of the smoother and more refined smartwatches to setup, but there are always hiccups with these "smart" gadgets. Like all smartwatches, it's useless out of the box without first pairing it with its corresponding mobile app. This is its charger. I've used the Charge 2, it looks similar, but incompatible. I don't know if it's interchangeable with the Charge 3 charger though. Here's another note telling you to download the app to setup the watch. It comes with another band for larger wrists. Just like the past models, the bands are of a proprietary snap on/ snap off style, but they're pretty easy to take off, no tools needed. There are also a lot of third party vendors in case the original gets worn. In this case, the spare band is for the side of the strap with holes, not the one with the buckle. The past models used to be sold as "large" or "small", but Charge 4 is sold as just one model, large OR small, with a second band in the box to convert it to large or small. The user upgraded to the Charge 4 because his Charge 2 finally died after 4 years of use. The display remained frozen despite trying the various "reset" techniques online. These are his previous dead Fitbits, the Force, with the tiny LCD screen, and the first Charge model. You can see it here, it's no longer attached to the band. This is the Charge 2 charger with the Charge 4. They look very similar but not interchangeable. This is the dead Charge 2 with the frozen display. It's straightforward to charge it, like the previous models, you align the gold pins on the rear of the tracker to the gold pins on the charger. The charger has a cutout for accessing the power button of the watch while it's in its cradle. Upon first boot, it shows this smiley face. And then it gives a link to its setup page. You can't use this watch without setting it up with its app at least one time the very first time. Interestingly enough, when I put this Fitbit close to the phone I was going pair it with, there's a little notification that prompted me to set up my Fitbit Charge 4. The phone automatically detected the watch! Pretty cool. Or freaky. I've never had that happen with other smart gadgets before. Maybe because Fitbit is now owned by Google so they want to have that kind of seamless gadget ecosystem thing Apple has. So I'm now running through the initial setup process. Spoiler alert, the first attempt failed. Not much to worry about, first time is often not the charm with Bluetooth gadgets. I tried again, and it paired smoothly. This part of the video has no cuts, so you can see it in real time and have an idea of how long to expect. OK, the 2nd time is the charm, there's a check mark on the watch's screen. And as with all new smart gadgets, they want you to install updates, so that's what I did here. So it won't get too boring, I didn't let the video clip run in real time this time, but you can see how long it took by tracking the phone's clock on the upper left of the phone's screen. Updated! It tells you to try it on, so I did. I outfitted it with the large band, so it's loose on my wrist. But that's because I'm not the end user, just setting it up for someone. The app then runs through a very basic tutorial on how to operate the watch. Just some basic watch gestures, you can read the instructions on the phone's screen. Swiping up shows you your basic fitness stats - like the pedometer, stairs climbed, heart rate etc. Pressing the power button brings you back to the watch face. Swiping from top to bottom shows you notifications. Pressing and holding the power button, as opposed to lightly tapping it, also brings up other functions like Do Not Disturb, Sleep Mode, NFC payments. You can see a list of paired Fitbit devices in the app. I deleted the Charge 2 from this list as it's defective already. There are various watchfaces to choose from. Some look nice in the thumbnails, but would be too cluttered or hard to read in actual practice. I also prefer the watchfaces that show the time, day, and date. I originally wanted to pick this "Rightful Stats" watch face, but as you can see in the red highlighted portion onscreen, this watch face isn't available until the watch is fully updated. The app is already the latest version, and I updated the watch earlier during the initial setup, but after I looked online, it said that the current firmware ISN'T the latest, and if I wait a day or two, just let the app and watch run, the update to the latest firmware will show up. I didn't see any button to force search for the firmware update manually. Next thing I did was to choose which apps are permitted to send notifications to the watch. You can also start using the watch already if you don't care about notifications, just disable this feature. Swiping from right to left on the watch will show some built in apps, you can customize what to see from this screen on the app. You can also control your music with Spotify, and only Spotify. Which is strange since Google owns Fitbit now, you'd think they'd let the watch control 0:08:22.580,1193:02:47.295 their own YouTube Music service. So this firmware version that ends in 78.33 is what the initial setup's update installed, but there's an even newer one apparently, because I wasn't able to install the watch face I wanted without it. And long pressing on the power button only shows Do Not Disturb and Screen Wake, no Sleep mode. The newer firmware will add Sleep mode to that long press menu. Do Not Disturb is just like a "silent mode" that you manually turn on and off while you can set a schedule for "sleep" mode in the app. This is a fitness oriented watch with basic smartwatch functions like phone call notification, you can even answer or reject calls with the watch. Answer meaning you click answer on the watch then talk on your phone, the watch itself has no microphone. You can choose which messaging apps whose notifications you want to see on the watch. There's also some basic canned replies you can set up on the app. That way when you receive a message, either SMS or messaging apps like Viber or WhatsApp, you can choose from the canned replies on your watch. Needless to say, you can't type on the watch, there's no keyboard for this tiny screen. Since I couldn't install my preferred watchface without the newer firmware that I couldn't manually download, I chose "Retro Double Stats" instead, it's an easy to read face with the important stats shown onscreen that you can see at a glance. I recorded the previous part on October 12, the day the watch arrived. We're now in part 2, recorded October 15. The long awaited firmware update has arrived. The app tells you to hold tight, that it can take over 30 minutes. I'm not going to let the following clip run in real time, to prevent boredom. You can look at the phone's clock to keep track of the elapsed time so you have an idea of how long to expect. Luckily it didn't take half an hour. Finally the watch's firmware update is done. The next couple of screens show you the new functions Fitbit added. First thing I checked though was to see if my preferred watch face is ready to install. At long last, there's a select button on the "Rightful Stats" watch face instead of the red box saying I need to get the latest firmware update. I like this face because the clock is large yet there's space for the day and date. The stats are squished, you don't see numerals, but it employs the "ring" system of the Apple Watch, one complete ring means you completed your goals for that day. You can toggle through the stats by lightly tapping the right side of the screen. And if you want detailed stats, you can swipe up from the bottom, that's always available no matter what the watch face is. The updated firmware also brings the "Sleep" function to the power button's long press menu. You can set a schedule for it too, so you don't have to manually turn it on or off. Sleep also dimmed the watch's screen, I noticed, while Do Not Disturb is really just for silencing notifications. There's a heart rate sensor on the rear like the past few Charge models, but remember, this is a fitness tracker, not a hardcore medical device, so don't take its readings as Gospel. The watch looks pretty nice, the default blue strap has these light diamond patterns and the buckle has rounded corners. Hope you found this setup video informative. Please thumb up this video if you did, and subscribe to be updated when I upload again. See you next video!