2013 Moto X: Can't unpair paired device because can't pair???

My 2013 Moto X (running 4.4.4) spontaneously did a system reset a week or two ago. I've restored everything that was backed up to the cloud, and manually restored most everything else.

To my surprise, I didn't lose the connection between my phone and my Fitbit Charge HR. I was still able to sync my fitness tracker's data to the Fitbit app on my phone.

I am, however, having problems with everything else about the Bluetooth connection between my devices. I tried to unpair the Fitbit from the phone:

Settings / Bluetooth / try to select Charge HR

Sadly, I get an error message:

Couldn't pair with Charge HR because of an incorrect PIN or passkey.

I get this message in other contexts, which is why I'm trying to unpair and re-pair.

Things tried:

- Turn the screen sideways so icons should be visible next to Charge HR (none are).

- Settings / Apps / ALL / Bluetooth Share / Clear cache and Clear data (cleared, but no improvement)

- Turn phone off and on again (no improvement)

- Recovery / Delete cache partition (cleared but no improvement)

Things not tried:

- Factory reset (that's what *got* me into this mess)

I'm still sort of paired, because I can still sync the Fitbit to the phone. But I'm not paired enough to do anything else, including unpairing!

What can I try next?

Accepted answers

sbwn40p0

I think I fixed it. tl;dr: I needed to unpair and repair via the Fitbit app, not through any other Android-y stuff.

I don't understand why clearing data from Bluetooth Share doesn't work. (I clear it, and there's 0B of data; I look again, and there's 96KB of data.) I no longer care.

For what it's worth, I turned things on and off and defenestrated a chicken, and then my Fitbit could sync with my Fitbut Charge HR. I don't know exactly what I did, sorry.

I then sync'ed my Fitbit. Then, instead of merely restarting it, I followed these instructions to factory reset the Fitbit (which talks about Android 4.3 or earlier, but the Fitbit factory reset instructions worked):

Help Site - Why can't I set up my new tracker using the Fitbit app for Android?

and then deleted the old Fitbit device in the Fitbit app and ran through the Fitbit setup instructions again. This displayed a (new?) PIN on my Fitbit device, which I entered into the Fitbit app.

Now "Charge HR" shows up as a Bluetooth device, and there's an icon next to it. I can now unpair it, but I no longer need to.

I'm still having trouble with making my Fitbit be a "trusted device" (that setup says "Try again" for both my phone PIN and my Fitbit Bluetooth PIN), but that's another support question for another day.

Andrew, any questions?

All comments

Verizon_Support

sbwn40p0,

That's certainly not the experience we want you to have! A factory reset could be an option but let's try a few other things first. Have you tried this in safe mode http://vz.to/1EtQaMf to see if that helps? Have you tried restarting the Fitbit to see if that does anything?
]
AndrewT_VZW
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sbwn40p0

Thanks, Andrew. Both these approaches were new to me.

Safe mode: No noticeable difference.

Reset Fitbit Charge HR (in regular non-safe mode): This seemed promising, because the Charge HR disappeared from the list of Bluetooth devices. I made my phone visible to all nearby Bluetooth devices, saw Charge HR appear, tapped it .. and sadly got the same old "Couldn't pair with Charge HR because of an incorrect PIN or passkey." message.

Anything else before a this-time-on-purpose factory reset? If a reset is the next thing to try, what should I expect to lose (and expect to manually restore)? Probably at least Wi-Fi passwords, right? Anything else?

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Verizon_Support

sbwn40p0,

That's very good information. Just to check, when you try to connect to the device, are you given the option to enter a pin or passkey?

We could check on options with that but short of that a factory reset likely will be our best option at this point. Before doing so we'd definitely want to make sure everything is backed up. You can use the Verizon Cloud http://vz.to/16bLoV6 to back up many things. It will only back up recent texts so if you need older ones I would recommend downloading an app to back those up. There are many in the Play Store. Certain settings like wi-fi passwords also won't be saved and would need to be set up again.

AndrewT_VZW
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If my response answered your question please click the �Correct Answer� button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

sbwn40p0

tl;dr: That really didn't work.

"... when you try to connect to the device, are you given the option to enter a pin or passkey?" The first time after the spontaneous reset, I was asked for a PIN. It was a free-form PIN, not a PIN limited limited to four digits (which I vaguely remember from pairing the Fitbit for the first time). I totally don't remember what Bluetooth PIN I used when I first paired the Fitbit to the Moto X, so I entered the phone's PIN. This was probably a mistake.

This afternoon, I factory reset my phone. Good news: I didn't lose my Wi-Fi passwords. You might already guess what the bad news is.

In Settings, I had Backup & reset enable Back up my data and Automatic restore. When I reset the phone, I had everything restored from my gmail.com account. That included Wi-Fi passwords, but unfortunately it also included Bluetooth information.

I don't mind losing six hours. That was pretty much expected for a factory reset.

Now, instead of only my Fitbit app being able to pair with my Fitbit, now even that app can't pair. My Fitbit can't sync, and I can't get any data off it.

I guess I need one of the following:

(1) some sort of backup solution, one with finer grain control over what gets restored and what doesn't (note: I don't use Backup Assistant Plus and I don't want to pay for Verizon Cloud);

(2) another factory reset with nothing restored (except what's in the cloud, I hope); or

(3) a way to remove the Moto X's pairing with the Fitbit. Which is where we started.

Now what?