Bizarre Google-related connectivity issues?

[zenninnom]

Hi all,

HTC One M8 Dev Edition, purchased in May of 2014 directly from HTC. The phone is fully stock and has never been rooted. The phone is operating on the AT&T network in the USA. I have started experiencing some very bizarre issues that I not been able to resolve. I'll try to explain as concisely as
possible.

When on the cellular network, at some undetermined point of time, some (and only some) Google applications and some Internet connectivity issues will arise.

* Chrome will refuse to bring up Google. Google searches don't work directly from the address bar. Chrome will only connect to sites that I have been to previously (from what I can tell.)
* PlayStore will outright stop working and says the Connection Timed Out. No amount of retrying gets it working.
* Gmail will just time out eventually when trying to do a refresh, and will not send emails either. It acts like there is no internet connection available.
* Google Search will not refresh/bring up other cards.
* Looking at Account Sync for Google, random things seem to be cycling / failing, often it seems to be People Details and Gmail (see above).

While this happens:

* All other internet related applications seem to work just fine. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it.
* Google Maps works just fine.
* Google Hangouts works just fine.
* Secondary browsers (such as the default HTC one) are able to bring up Google and do searches as expected. Gmail won't come up though.

Troubleshooting:

* This only happens on the cellular network. If the failures are occurring and I can hop on Wifi, everything seems to start working again. (Haven't been able to consistently verify this but does seem to be the case.)
* Reboots (fast or without fast reboot) do not seem to consistently resolve the issue.
* The issue happens daily.
* It seems to not matter where I am when it happens when on the cellular network. I could be in the office, in a different city, at an airport, you name it.
* Factory reset did not solve the problem as it reappeared within a day.
* SIM card was removed and reinserted.
* Phone seems to work fine otherwise - nothing else peculiar.
* Issue seems to start about 2 weeks ago or so. I cannot pinpoint any particular change or application that I may have added (or re-added since the reset.) Note: I did drop the phone once - there are two scuff marks on the left side. This happened about 2 months ago before any kind of issues like this were seen.

I am beyond frustrated as I cannot figure out the logic behind the failures. I love the phone but am ready to throw it out the window.

The last thing I haven't tried is to get a new SIM card. From some research online, it does sound like there is some grounds to suspect intermittent connection issues from a faulty SIM card. Would that really cause such specific errors?

Any thoughts or advice before I contact HTC? (And will HTC simply deny any warranty due to having dropping the phone?)

Thank you.

 

[Golfdriver97]

Try resetting app preferences. Settings>Apps>>menu>reset app preferences. This sometimes helps with Play issues.

 

[zenninnom]

Try resetting app preferences. Settings>Apps>>menu>reset app preferences. This sometimes helps with Play issues.

Tried that, no difference. I would think that would have happened through the factory reset anyway, no?

 

[Golfdriver97]

Tried that, no difference. I would think that would have happened through the factory reset anyway, no?

Good point. I am honestly not sure what else to suggest.

 

[zenninnom]

Ok so I've been doing just a little more troubleshooting. I think I've narrowed it down and we'll see how the phone does today.

When I disable LTE on the phone and use 4G only (or downwards), none of the symptoms seem to arise. I was wondering about this since the phone would behave whenever on WiFi as well - indicating to me that there's something else going on.

If the phone behaves during the course of today then my question is this - is it possible that there's something wrong with the SIM card causing this problem? Or is this more likely to be a hardware failure that I need to rectify through HTC? I know noone can predict but just curious to hear some input from anyone.

Thank you.

 

[Android Optimizer]

HTC One M8 Dev Edition, purchased in May of 2014 directly from HTC. The phone is fully stock and has never been rooted. The phone is operating on the AT&T network in the USA.
When on the cellular network, at some undetermined point of time, some (and only some) Google applications and some Internet connectivity issues will arise.
* Chrome will refuse to bring up Google. Google searches don't work directly from the address bar. Chrome will only connect to sites that I have been to previously (from what I can tell.)
* PlayStore will outright stop working and says the Connection Timed Out. No amount of retrying gets it working.
* Gmail will just time out eventually when trying to do a refresh, and will not send emails either. It acts like there is no internet connection available.
* Google Search will not refresh/bring up other cards.
* Looking at Account Sync for Google, random things seem to be cycling / failing, often it seems to be People Details and Gmail (see above).

While this happens:

* All other internet related applications seem to work just fine.
* Gmail won't come up though.

Troubleshooting:

* This only happens on the cellular network. If the failures are occurring and I can hop on Wifi, everything seems to start working again. (Haven't been able to consistently verify this but does seem to be the case.)
* Reboots (fast or without fast reboot) do not seem to consistently resolve the issue.
* The issue happens daily.
* Factory reset did not solve the problem as it reappeared within a day.
* Phone seems to work fine otherwise - nothing else peculiar.
* Issue seems to start about 2 weeks ago or so. I cannot pinpoint any particular change or application that I may have added (or re-added since the reset.) Note: I did drop the phone once - there are two scuff marks on the left side. This happened about 2 months ago before any kind of issues like this were seen.

The last thing I haven't tried is to get a new SIM card. From some research online, it does sound like there is some grounds to suspect intermittent connection issues from a faulty SIM card. Would that really cause such specific errors?

Any thoughts or advice before I contact HTC? (And will HTC simply deny any warranty due to having dropping the phone?)

Thank you.

I noticed a similar Connection Timed Out message from Google Play Store about a week ago. It seemed to happen after long periods of sleep. Like you I found other network/Internet things like Chrome continued to work without problem during the play store connection errors. I thought a plausible reason was that I have it set not to allow the play store to update over mobile data (which is switched to in sleep mode since I also have it set not to use wifi when sleeping). Restarting, of course, worked to fix the situation until the next morning when after sleeping for hours launching the play store would result in the time out again. Later I found that the simple act of closing the play store after the error message followed by turning off and turning back on wifi also fixed the problem (not that surprising), but was surprising is that the time out error hasn't occurred since that one switch off/on. All that being said given that you said the problem occurs for you when using data it may be worth a try after you get the error to close play store, and then switch off and back on mobile data (while wifi is off of course). If the Google Play Store connection time-out ever happens again I'll test some of the other apps that you said weren't working for you,and see if they're also down. In the meantime I recommend you check your time-out, sleep, and power settings to see if changes to those have an effect on your time-out occurring. One final thing, you don't have a check in the box for only downloading updates over wifi only for the Play Store do you?

If the phone behaves during the course of today then my question is this - is it possible that there's something wrong with the SIM card causing this problem? Or is this more likely to be a hardware failure that I need to rectify through HTC? I know noone can predict but just curious to hear some input from anyone.

I doubt the SIM card is the problem. People who have SIM card problems tend to have things not work all the time as opposed to intermittently, and they tend to report other problems (like problems making phone calls, staying connected to phone calls, loosing mobile data during phone calls, etc). I've never heard of anyone having Google related SIM card problems in part because Google doesn't write their code to involve SIM cards. Google apps work on devices with or without SIM cards. If a SIM card was causing a mobile data problem for you its likely everything that uses mobile data (like Chrome's connection in this case) would also be effected, and as you said it isn't.

 

[Stefan Frandsen]

So I wanted to close the loop on this. I spent the better part of a month troubleshooting this - talking to Google's own support directly, trying various things with AT&T, and then spending several sessions with HTC before HTC finally gave up and agreed to have the phone sent in for warranty repair.

The issues I was having above had gotten severe enough that on first startup of a clean phone, I could go straight to the Play store and have it fail immediately but only when on LTE. The same symptoms I listed earlier still applied. In addition to the troubleshooting steps mentioned earlier, APN settings were changed, the phone reflashed, new Google accounts tried... there wasn't anything left to try in my opinion.

I got the phone back this evening, and so far the newly fixed phone seems to be working perfectly fine. I have no idea what, if anything, HTC did to the phone. I can tell it's clearly the same outer casing I got (I recognize a scuffmark on the side) but for all I know, they could have replaced everything inside. They certainly never charged anything at least. HTC doesn't provide any other information as to what may have been done.

So mystery kind of solved? Just wanted to post this in the slight chance that someone else with a similar problem finds this and wants to know what the resolution was.