[AC Question]

Hi all, I seem to be having a very irritating problem with my apps. I have been off and on the phone with both Google and my service provider for 8 hours since yesterday and still do not have the problem resolved. To summarize:

- I refilled my Straight Talk phone service on January 3rd
- Prior to refilling my phone did not ever experience any issues (5 years of service)
- Immediately after refilling and the initial restart-up of the phone, I began to have notification problems
> The problem: On start up, I receive one round of notifications from apps (such as Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, Whisper, all my game apps, and etc.) Then my normally blue 3G service bars with full signal turn constantly grey as intermediate 5-30 minutes after power up, and all 3G-related notifications stop. (I do not use Wifi.) I can still make calls and receive texts, as well as connect to my web browser with no problems, just the apps don't receive notifications: not even while I am using them.
>> My main concern is with Facebook messenger and Whatsapp, although the problem affects all web-connecting apps that provide notifications. They still show in my running apps as active and operating background processes (such as ChatHeadService and MqttPushService.)
>>> Another notable symptom when all of this starts happening is that the battery indicator icon in my notifications bar becomes inaccurate. It freezes at whatever percentage it is at. I have to restart my phone every few minutes to temporarily fix these problems.

What I have tried:
- Calling my service provider 4-5 times to have my phone service reset/reprogrammed, the APN checked, the tower checked, the signal, and all kinds of other ungodly things that did not work (note: I have full coverage in my area)
- Calling Google tech support for advice and assessment
- Clearing the cache of all my apps
- Limiting and unlimiting background processes
- Turning mobile data on and off
- (Yes, turning the phone off and back on again)
- Taking out the battery and restarting (and there are no problems with the battery according to my service provider)
- Uninstalling and reinstalling the apps

Factors:
- My apps are all up to date and were not updated recently nor did they require any new updates at the time I refilled my phone service with Straight Talk
- Notifications are enabled within my phone and within the individual apps as well
- The problem began immediately after refilling my service and has persisted consistently for a week now

What I have NOT tried:
- Replacing the battery (that is what I intend to do next and will update)
- Doing a hard factory reset (this I am not willing to do because there are older accounts on my phone that I will lose access to as I no longer have access to the passwords or recovery emails.)
- Removing the SIM card (for a lack of accessibility to backup my data on a reliable computer)
- Throwing my phone out the window

My service provider is puzzled and basically told me they can't do anything else. The people I've spoken to were not very knowledgeable and honestly could not speak English very well either. I have been all over every forum on the net and can't seem to find a solution, so if anyone could help me out with this nightmare I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone do you have? Have you considered asking your carrier for a replacement SIM?

[dpham00]

Which phone do you have?