A new vision for the Fitbit app is currently in the hands of a select group of Android users, and the experience is…complicated. While the aesthetic is cleaner, a core reliance on artificial intelligence is creating more confusion than clarity. This isn’t a simple refresh; it’s a fundamental shift in how you interact with your health data.
One immediate improvement is the clarity of key metrics. The home screen now prioritizes three customizable “focus metrics” alongside a visually intuitive cardio load indicator. Tracking progress toward a weekly cardio goal feels more grounded than the previous daily measurement, offering a more realistic perspective on fitness.
Navigating the app is also significantly streamlined. The introduction of dedicated tabs for Fitness, Sleep, and Health eliminates the endless scrolling of the previous version. Finding recent workouts, sleep stages, and vital signs like resting heart rate is now remarkably straightforward.
The Health tab reveals a new dimension: “coach notes” generated by the AI. These notes attempt to personalize your experience, noting preferences like “wants low reps and heavy weights” or dislikes like “hates lunges.” It’s a fascinating, if slightly unsettling, glimpse into how the app is trying to understand you.
However, the promise of a smoother experience is undermined by persistent glitches. Workouts are mislabeled as “upcoming,” the app crashes unexpectedly, and settings appear inconsistent between the old and new versions. These aren’t minor annoyances; they’re fundamental issues that disrupt the core functionality.
More concerning is the replacement of traditional data views with AI-driven conversations. Instead of instantly accessible graphs and charts, you’re often presented with insights *from* the AI, requiring further interaction to uncover the underlying data. It feels like a step backward in terms of efficient information access.
The AI itself is proving unreliable. Conversations frequently fail to load, the bot claims it lacks access to information, or it contradicts data displayed elsewhere in the app. Even if the AI were flawless, the conversational interface is simply too slow and cumbersome for quick data analysis.
It’s as if the app’s designers defaulted to “let the AI handle it” whenever a feature proved challenging to build directly. This creates a frustrating dependency on a technology that isn’t yet ready for prime time, turning the app into a wrapper around an imperfect bot.
Currently, significant features are missing entirely. Nutrition tracking, menstrual health monitoring, community features, and even detailed workout analysis are absent from this preview. These aren’t future enhancements; they’re core functionalities that have been deliberately excluded to focus on the AI coaching experience.
The AI coach also avoids certain topics, including weight management, body fat percentage, running distance, and even critical heart health measurements like ECG and irregular rhythm notifications. This limited scope raises questions about the true potential of this AI-driven approach.
