{"id":254856,"date":"2026-05-25T08:22:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T09:10:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T13:10:53","slug":"fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitbit Air arrived early \u2014 but Android users can&#8217;t use it yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gagadget.com\/en\/712108-fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/\">Fitbit Air arrived early \u2014 but Android users can&#8217;t use it yet<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gagadget.com\/en\/712108-fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/\">https:\/\/gagadget.com\/en\/712108-fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-25 08:22:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"gagadget.com\">gagadget.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFitbit Air comes in three band styles at launch, all requiring Google Health 5.0 to pair.. Source: Photo: Google<\/p>\n<p>Google&#8217;s new Fitbit Air fitness tracker reached some pre-order customers ahead of its May 26 official launch \u2014 but many Android users found the $99.99 device completely unusable on arrival. The culprit: the mandatory Google Health app update to version 5.0 hadn&#8217;t yet rolled out to their phones. For anyone who paid \u00a384.99 in the UK expecting a seamless unboxing, that&#8217;s a frustrating way to start.<\/p>\n<h2>The pairing problem<\/h2>\n<p>Fitbit Air is a screenless, buttonless tracker that requires the new Google Health app (v5.0) to pair and function. Google is migrating all existing Fitbit users to this app between May 19 and May 26, but the rollout is staggered \u2014 and early deliveries outpaced it. Android users who tried to set up their new band were met with an &#8216;app update required&#8217; error and no way forward, as Droid Life reported.<\/p>\n<p>iOS users had no such problem. Apple&#8217;s version of Google Health 5.0 went live several days earlier, so iPhone owners received and set up their trackers without issue. A Google product team member confirmed on Reddit that the Android rollout is being accelerated, but gave no specific fix date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"iframe_16_9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Meet Google Fitbit Air | Lighter, Gets Mightier\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/v4xrW2FVEq4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>The device itself<\/h2>\n<p>Fitbit Air is a stripped-back wearable aimed at people exhausted by smartwatch notifications and always-on displays. The $99.99 price \u2014 \u00a384.99 in the UK \u2014 is a significant undercut against rivals: the Oura Ring starts around \u00a3349, and a Whoop 5.0 subscription runs roughly \u00a3170 a year. Fitbit Air asks for neither a subscription nor a screen, trading both for a claimed seven-day battery life and continuous health tracking.<\/p>\n<p>At launch, Google offers three band styles: a Performance Loop for&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gagadget.com\/en\/712108-fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fitbit Air arrived early \u2014 but Android users can&#8217;t use it yet https:\/\/gagadget.com\/en\/712108-fitbit-air-arrived-early-but-android-users-cant-use-it-yet\/ Publish Date:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/gagadget.com\/media\/cache\/92\/c0\/92c00459668c3c756c8556b692e8eaf2.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-254856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254858,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254856\/revisions\/254858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}