Fitbit Surge : The Computer Inside

The Fitbit Surge : Teardown from iFixit 

The only smartwatch I have tried, a Fitbit Surge (<- click link) has been living on my wrist for about 6 months! I found this teardown to look inside without destroying mine! Just click the linked title in the image caption to see the official teardown :) 


A few years ago I mounted an iPod Nano 6 into a LunaTik band! I wear it on special occasions rarely, and it gave me a taste for what smartwatches would be like in the future. Interesting, but not something that could compete with my other watches!

The Fitbit Surge with its heart rate tracking, workout GPS tracking, automatic sleep tracking, step count, etc, it had enough features that when my friend Jaeson gave me one, I immediately began wearing it regularly! Today I suffer from wrist skin rashes from wearing the Surge 24.7 too often, not letting water and sweat dry out from under the band. I have resorted to taking breaks from wearing it and not capturing the "quantified self" data that it would otherwise provide me. 

The Fitbit App on the smartphone is the partner in crime, it connects to the Surge via bluetooth. The interface is snappy and fast, the touchscreen fluid and responsive, this from a tiny low powered computer running at 48 MHz! I use the GPS tracking when Meg and I go workout, it saps the battery quickly! Fitbit claims 7 days of casual use battery life & or 7 hours of GPS. Its more like 3-5 days of 24.7 runtime depending on settings and use case, and perhaps 3-5 hours of GPS. 

In the past I would wear my Surge in the shower, but the touch screen control goes spaz when wet, it must be dried off to work properly. Lately I just wear the surge to track workouts; I have to let the skin rashes that formed from improper use heal up. The owners manual recommends taking the Surge off from time to time, not wearing it in the shower, and letting the band & your wrist dry before putting it back on. 

The Fitbit Surge is a touchscreen computer, a very low power, power optimized one, but a real computer with sensors, a backlit touch screen, GPS tracking and bluetooth wireless IO! You can wear a touchscreen sensor enhanced computer on your wrist with tons of cool sensors, that pairs with your smartphone to give you a visualization of the user data, goals, alarms, all kinds of cool functions. With 500% longer battery life than the Apple Watch Series 2, the Fitbit Surge is more reasonable to use as a fitness tracking watch! 

Surge Specs via Teardown ^^ awesome ^^ 

Display: Sharp TFT-LCD with Cypress CY8CTMA463 touchscreen controller !!!

CPU : Silicon Labs EFM32 Giant Gecko (ARM Cortex-M3) 48 MHz : 1024 kB flash : 128kB RAM !

RAM : Micron Serial NOR Flash N25Q064A11ESEA0F !

Texas Instruments Battery Charger BQ24232H !

MediaTek GPS Receiver MT3339 !

Texas Instruments Bluetooth Controller CC2564 !