Google, Please Don’t Kill Fitbit (Premium)

Last week, Google confirmed that it has stopped selling Fitbit trackers in dozens of countries around the world. Its rationale for this scaling back---“to align [its] hardware portfolio to map closer to Pixel’s regional availability," is of course suspect. So all the Fitbit fan can do now is wonder, worry, and wait.

Since that's my default posture, I'm in familiar territory here. But Fitbit's decision, whatever the real reason, comes at an interesting time: My wife and I are both long-time Fitbit users and we both coincidentally upgraded to new Fitbits, my wife with a Versa 4 smartwatch and me with the Google Pixel Watch 2.

Neither one of us really needed or even wanted to upgrade.

My wife had been using a three-year-old Versa 2 smartwatch, which never had any serious issues beyond the usual Fitbit nonsense, like its inability to switch time zones and its poor sleep tracking. But we were flipping the mattress on our bed in Mexico City last month and her Versa 2's display just popped off like the glue holding it on had disappeared. And it stopped working.

In my case, I received a free Pixel Watch 2 because I preordered the Pixel 8 Pro smartphone on the day both products were announced. I had been using a Fitbit Charge 5 since I left the Apple Watch and tested the original Pixel Watch this Spring. And I was happy to remain with the Charge 5, honestly: It does exactly what I want, and nothing more, and its battery lasts for 6 days.

Anyway. We both upgraded.

My wife had previously left her weird, large Versa 2 charger behind on a previous trip to Mexico, so we have some experience with Fitbit availability in one of the countries that Google just pulled Fitbit out of. Which is to say, there wasn't any. We searched high and low, in department stores, electronics stores, and malls, and while you could sometimes find a random Fitbit device, we never once found any Fitbit accessories, not the charger my wife needed or anything else. If there was any place to find Fitbit gear in Mexico, it was Mexico City, with its metro area population north of 20 million people. But it was like Fitbit didn't exist in Mexico. And now, I guess it officially does not.

After losing out on her fitness data for two or three weeks, my wife never forgot her charger again. (Being compulsive, I always have two chargers, one for home and one in my travel bag. This information was not helpful to my wife.) But with her Versa 2 display beheaded from the device, we were in new territory. We already knew that Fitbit had no presence in this country. Now what?

Well, thank the magic of Amazon.com, which in Mexico City is just as good as its American counterpart, with next-day or two-day delivery of most items. So my wife researched the latest Fitbits and the Pixel Watch 2, the latter of which she quickly took out of the running because of its sub-one-day battery life. She does prefer the smartwatch form factor, however, so after comparing the similar Fitb...