Android 4.4 authentication *showstopper* issue. "Couldn't sign in....."

[Rob Curtis]

Hi. I really could do with some help here

I own a Galaxy S4. Since the kit kat update, the OS has been flaky and my phone keeps rebooting itself, which while pretty bizarre, I can live with it since, up to now, the phone has worked well, and the re-boot is speedy.

However, as of 5 days ago, I have managed to hit a pretty significant issue.

Firstly, I could not visit Google Play or even access my email and I do not know what triggered this. It seemed that it was random. Upon trying to re-authenticate, using correct credentials, I got the following message:

"Couldn't sign in

There was a problem communicating with Google servers

Try again later"

After getting this message 20 something times over the last 5 days, I no longer have the belief that "Trying again later" is going to fix this issue.

To make matters worse I tried removing my google account, which now has resulted in me not having any contacts on my phone.

I have read around a few forums and most of the tabled solutions talk about turning off 2 step authentication. Whilst that is great if it fixes someone else's issue, I have never had it on hence it is of no use to me.

If you are able to help, it really would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and Regards, Rob

 

[cgrobbel]

Dear Rob,

I had exactly the same problem with my Galaxy S4 after the upgrade to Android 4.4.2 yesterday. This morning I shut down the phone took out the SIM card, did another restart of the phone and then it worked. Despite the fact that it had already done a restart after the software update, it needed one more. Of course I did plug in the SIM card afterwards and everything is still fine.

In case that does not help: I uninstalled all updated to Chrome yesterday night and emptied the Chrome cache and data, but I don't think this is related to the problem solving.

Best regards,
Christoph