I purchased 5 SyncUp Kids watches for Christmas this year. Kids love them, but yesterday I had a second watch get stuck not getting past the loading screen. I'm not sure what led up to it, but the symptoms seem to appear out of nowhere. The watch doesn't respond to anything. The only thing you can do is hold the button for 20secs or so and it will buzz and hard-reset, then get to the loading screen and sequence the three pink dots on the bottom indefinitely.
When the first watch did this I called 611. They seemed very unfamiliar with this product, and appear to have limited ability to troubleshoot anything. Apparently the only way to factory reset these watches is through the settings menu in the interface and in this case it can't get there. They had me go into a store and do a defect exchange (At first they wanted to charge me $5 to file manufacturer warranty and give me a refurbished watch, I refused and insisted on another option. Who charges $5 for a manufacturing defect?)
Yesterday the second, of five, watches has the same symptoms as before. Stuck at the loading screen, the only thing I can do that gets any response is hard-reset by holding on the button. Having two of these cases now, within 2 months of new, I can't imagine I am unique but I can't find any record of people having issues, so I am here, trying to find solutions, and share my experience.
Question 1- Is there a hidden way to factory reset these watches without accessing the settings menu? If not, why?!
Question 2- Are other people having these same issues? Are my kids doing something to their watches they shouldn't be doing? What might it be? Both times this happened it was overnight, we know because that is when they go offline. I suspect my kids are grabbing them off their chargers to play with them at night, but I can't think of anything they could do to their watch in their beds that would cause them to bug-out.