The World According to Mitch

Had you asked me last night which device was winning, it was a pretty easy call… I am really loving the Microsoft Band 2.  So when I went to bed and turned out the light, I was happy to click the appropriate buttons to set my Sleep cycle… which was really easy to learn on this device.  I was glad that when I woke up in the morning I would know exactly how well I slept.

Wrong.

When I woke up I pressed the Action Button on the side of my Band and… nothing.  The screen was blank.  The battery, obviously, was dead.

I am not unreasonable.  I know that batteries die.  Heck, in the First Impressions article the other day I even stated that the Fitbit had a better battery life than the Band.  Andrew at the Microsoft Store told me that the life span would be about two days.  I was ready for all of that.

But let me show you an e-mail I got the other day.  It came from Fitbit, and it came when I left the Microsoft Store having just given the new device a very short charge:

See that?  Fitbit told me that my device needed to be charged.  What did I get from Microsoft?

Silence… a dead device is what I got.  And because I had left the charging cable in my car, I would not have an opportunity to charge it until I got to the office.  Result?  Right now my right hand says I have taken 3,747 steps and climbed 5 flights of stairs, while my left hand says I have taken 1,728 steps.  Oddly enough, because the two systems count ‘flights of stairs’ differently, it also thinks I have climbed 5 flights of stairs.

Ok… so now I know.  There is no warning or notice, there is simply DEAD BATTERY.  I’ll know for next time.  But if you guys are listening, hey Microsoft Band Team how difficult would a LOW BATTERY notification be?