Question Using a VPN with Android

[MarkDT]

I need to connect to a VPN for work, and soon I'll be going on a 'working holiday' so I'll need to do this regularly via my Samsung A52. Some time ago this stopped working. From what I can gather, support for it has been withdrawn:

Google Issue Tracker

issuetracker.google.com

If I try to use the same connection that worked previously, I see "Connecting" followed by "Disconnected". There's no error message. The settings are correct.

It's not a carrier issue, the phone is connected to WiFi. Everything else on the same internet connection works with the VPN except this phone. Clients with other Android phones have the identical issue.

I have to solve this, and at the moment, the only possible solution appears to be "buy an Apple iPhone". I'm hoping there's another solution, can anyone advise?

Maybe an app that will handle the VPN connection instead of the one built into the OS? It's not a commercial VPN so there isn't a specific app for it.

 

[methodman89]

Nord works fine for me with Android. Galaxy S9 and Pixel 3

 

[MarkDT]

We can't use a commercially available service, we have to use the one we're using now, which doesn't have an app.

From what I can see Google broke this with Android 13 and despite a long thread of angry people and apologies from Google, it isn't going to be fixed.

It doesn't seem possible to revert the handset back to Android 12 and prevent it from "upgrading" itself again, I had an app that did that with my old S8 which stopped any and all OS updates by preventing the phone ever detecting them, maybe that could work, but I'd have to reinstall the older OS. Or buy an Apple iPhone.

I'm hoping there's a third option..

 

[Daniel Detkowski]

Apple time!

 

[methodman89]

You could buy an older phone, such as an S9 for about $80 and dedicate it for work. Good luck

 

[MarkDT]

I guess I could use my old S8 - I still have it, it's still as it was, out-of-the-box, with Andoid 7 if I remember rightly. It was a much better phone and because I worked out how to scupper the updates from the start as soon as it started nagging about installing them, it all still works beautifully. Except the touchscreen which has dead zones, but that doesn't matter if it's just used for a connection.