Galaxy S4 Mini - only getting notifications over wifi

sir_boostalot

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Apr 13, 2014
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Hi all, I couldn't find any answers to this particular question so I joined up to post this thread, in the hopes that one of you Android experts can help me out.

My phone only displays notifications from certain apps (FB Messenger, Snapchat, Tinder, maybe a few others) when it is connected to wifi. When I am not connected to wifi, I can still use these apps and send/receive messages, but when I get home and connect to wifi again I receive all the notifications I should have gotten earlier in the day. Email, SMS, WhatsApp, and BBM all deliver notifications just fine over the mobile network.

Potentially relevant info...
- Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini
- Android version 4.2.2
- sync and mobile data are enabled
- "restrict background data" is NOT enabled for the affected apps
- connected to Koodo (Telus) network in Canada

Any insight into my issue would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 

Rukbat

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It sounds like an isolated case and would require experimenting with the phone to possibly come up with an answer. Since no one can duplicate the problem on his phone, no one can diagnose it. We view your post to see if we can help you, but then we find that we can't - and 200 "sorry, I don't know" posts wouldn't help you.

If could be a setting, it could be a glitch in the notification firmware. It could be a lot of things. Have you tried talking to techs at Telus? There's a better chance that they've run across the problem than there is that we have. They spend 40 hours a week working on these things. For most of us it's just something to do, like watching TV.
 

sir_boostalot

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It sounds like an isolated case and would require experimenting with the phone to possibly come up with an answer. Since no one can duplicate the problem on his phone, no one can diagnose it. We view your post to see if we can help you, but then we find that we can't - and 200 "sorry, I don't know" posts wouldn't help you.

If could be a setting, it could be a glitch in the notification firmware. It could be a lot of things. Have you tried talking to techs at Telus? There's a better chance that they've run across the problem than there is that we have. They spend 40 hours a week working on these things. For most of us it's just something to do, like watching TV.

Thanks for the reply, and sorry if my last post came across badly. That wasn't my intention. The purpose of asking the question was to get some suggestions about what settings, etc I could try modifying to deal with the issue, in case there were any potential fixes that would be obvious to a more knowledgeable/experienced user. I didn't realize I had such an uncommon problem.

Nobody likes calling tech support but maybe this time I'll have to give it a go.
 

Rukbat

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First, boostalot, your post didn't "come across" as anything other than your not having been on internet forums for years. If you had been, you might have bumped the post after a week, with no comment. I never assume that anyone was born with all the knowledge he'll ever need, so I never fault anyone for not knowing something (like just bumping a post). It actually bothers me when someone posts a "you should know better" or "can't you even write proper English" post in response to a newcomer or foreigner. We all have to learn just about everything we need to know.

Now then, 2 cases is statistically insignificantly different from one case - it's still a VERY SMALL percentage of Telus users who use Facebook, Snapchat, Tinder, etc. If 500 people have complained to Telus, and they have an idea of what's causing the problem, it's still a very small percentage of their customers, but at least they have a chance of finding it. We see very few posts about the problem - almost any problem - and we can't experiment with the network, so our chance of knowing what to try for a network we're not on (and in my case, with apps I don't use) is like looking for a needle in a needle-stack in a field of needles.

It could be content filtering, it could be something in the apps (maybe all the apps having the problem are using the same class file, which has a problem with something Telus is doing) ... there are many possibilities, but nothing sticks out as a probability. (I've only been working with mobile phones for about 50 years [I started with MTS and stayed in the industry until recently], but I never designed the silicon or developed Android communications classes, so maybe someone with more experience than I have will see something in common in all the problems.)

But try Telus tech support. I've never called them, being in the US, but some companies have actual technical people doing tech support (which is why I paid more for my internet connection for years - the first call brought you to someone who other companies would call level 4 tech support - engineering). Then there are the others, who hire people who can read scripts. If you don't let it get to you, all it can cost you is a free phone call and a few minutes to determine that they're as useful as feathers on a fish. If you're lucky (meaning that they're good), a few instances of "press this" and you're working right.
 

codyoehl

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My phone does this too, I think it is a setting somewhere, where it will only give notifications over wifi, as to not waste cellular data on constantly refreshing apps and searching for notifications

Posted via Android Central App with my Samsung Galaxy S5
 

Rukbat

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One hint for anyone having any problem - with any kind of computer. If you can figure out how to cause the problem to occcur, so thatif I had that phone, I could always make it happen when I wanted it to, and the developer, network, manufacturer or whoever is responsible for that problem gets that information, fixing it is usually pretty trivial. It's like going to the doctor with a cough. There's no cure for "a cough". Once he diagnoses it, assuming we have a cure for what he diagnoses, "fixing" it is simple. It's going from "cough" to "viral pneumonia" that takes the work. So is going from "my phone does this" to "my phone does this every time you do this sequence of events" - and that's what's needed to fix it - being able to "break" it every time you want to.
 

Rukbat

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Power saving mode slows the CPU, it has nothing to do with notifications (except that it may delay them by a second or two).
 

Jordy de Koning

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Hi all, I couldn't find any answers to this particular question so I joined up to post this thread, in the hopes that one of you Android experts can help me out.

My phone only displays notifications from certain apps (FB Messenger, Snapchat, Tinder, maybe a few others) when it is connected to wifi. When I am not connected to wifi, I can still use these apps and send/receive messages, but when I get home and connect to wifi again I receive all the notifications I should have gotten earlier in the day. Email, SMS, WhatsApp, and BBM all deliver notifications just fine over the mobile network.

Potentially relevant info...
- Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini
- Android version 4.2.2
- sync and mobile data are enabled
- "restrict background data" is NOT enabled for the affected apps
- connected to Koodo (Telus) network in Canada

Any insight into my issue would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I have found a possible solution, go to the app google settings, data management (I am translating so not sure how it is really called) and turn on wifi and mobile. It is in a app and not your normal settings.

Good luck!
 

sir_boostalot

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Apr 13, 2014
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I had this problem. It was due to the fact I had Google services backgound data restricted. I hope this helps.

This was it! Notifications are now coming through. Thank you for solving this after all this time... I had given up long ago. Google Services was not shown as "Restricted" in the list, but when I looked more closely, the box was checked.

where do you change the sertting that restricts Google services backgound data ?

Go to your settings (on my device, swipe down from top, hit the gear icon) then go to "Data usage". Here you will see a list of apps and their data usage... hit Google Services and make sure the box beside "restrict background data" is not checked.
 
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