Problem updating pre-installed apps

pinkythepolo · February 1st, 2012, 07:30 AM

Hi! I'm completely new to smartphones, having moved from a two-year old Nokia 5800 XPressMusic to my two-week old HTC Desire S, so there are a lot of things that are completely new to me!

Anyway, every now and again I get a reminder saying that certain pre-installed apps such as GMail and Google Search need to be updated. However, once I try to get them to update they just stick on 'updating' for aaaaaages. I don't have computer access at home so thought it was the 3G signal that was the problem but even trying it on the wi-fi at office it was doing nothing after an hour and a half.

I've heard things such as moving the applications its updating to SD card and all sorts of things. Something is obviously not working quite right. Can you help? (I'm on T-Mobile, by the way)

Thank you!

Nor3X · February 1st, 2012, 08:15 AM

Hi, pinkythepolo, maybe you should try to go to the MARKET and look to right hand side it will say "My Apps", select that and then on top of your screen it will say "update all" or you can select individual apps from your list.

Hope this helps you.

pinkythepolo · February 1st, 2012, 11:56 AM

Sorry, that doesn't work - as soon as I go into 'My Apps' it automatically starts trying to update some pre-installed apps - I have no option to select these particular ones. I can only stop it trying to download exiting 'My Apps'.

The problem is that it has about five of them in the list and it has an animated grey bar that is moving to indicate that it is updating, and the status says 'Starting Download' but it never moves from 'Starting Download', even after being on Wi-fi for an hour and a half.

Just wondering whether there's a setting somewhere that needs to be changed. It will be a real pain if I have to physically plug it into a PC to do these updates as I'd specifically said when I bought this phone that I wasn't going to be able to do that - its either over GSM or Wi-fi or nothing!

Help!

Nor3X · February 2nd, 2012, 02:34 AM

After many....and many...hours of research i found you this - androidforums.com/desire-support-troubleshooting/242490-updating-apps-came-pre-installed-my-htc-desire.html. That means that you can't update them through Android Market.

notebook · February 2nd, 2012, 08:04 AM

@pinkythepolo

Many of the pre-installed apps that came with your phone can and will be updated via Android Market, as and when required. HTC related apps/widgets will be updated via an Over The Air update to the phone's ROM or via 'HTC Sense'.

You can try and clear this problem by giving this a go, Menu > Settings > Applications > Manage applications > All (tab) > Select the Market app in the list > Clear data (Don't worry, all your user data will return as all the information regarding your use of Android Market is kept on the web) > Return to your Home Screen

Then, Power off your phone > Remove battery for 30 seconds > Replace battery and power on > Try the Market app again to see if things have cleared up.

pinkythepolo · February 2nd, 2012, 11:33 AM

Thank you, Nor3X and Notebook, for your time looking into this. Its much appreciated.

I'm pleased to say, though, that I have found a very simple solution that actually works! Well, I said "I found" but in fact it was an assistant at a local T-mobile shop I was able to visit who tried something that worked!

It was just down to something so simple as the phone just not being able to cope with trying to update multiple applications at the same time. I didn't think this was a problem as it was trying to do it itself without me having to ask, but anyway, sometimes these smartphones are too clever for their own good!

What was happening was that each application would show that it was 'Starting Download' and a grey animated bar would appear below the application name - so I had four apps listed and grey animated bars below each one, except the animated bars just kept rotating but the downloading notification icon never appeared on the top left.

What the assistant did was to long press on the application it was trying to download and selected 'cancel update' (or whatever) and did that to all the ones it was trying to update.

When we then just selected one single app and asked it to update, it did it perfectly fine.

I've now managed to update all the ones that it was reminding me to do.

All the problem was was that it couldn't cope with doing all four or five at the same time and so didn't do any at all. Just stopping it trying to do that and getting it to do them one at a time solved the problem.

Phew!

Thanks once again though.

pinkythepolo · February 2nd, 2012, 11:37 AM

So, thinking about it, Nor3X, it was the solution you first thought of, but doing it a different way. I didn't have the option to select individual apps it was trying to do as soon as I went into 'My Apps', but I wasn't aware that by long pressing on the app name I'd come up with a sub-menu.

It's all these new Android things I'm getting used to! Im so grateful for these forums though as even with a 200+ page guide book there are lots of things that just aren't covered at all.

Still, I like my HTC Desire S, even though its giving me more grey hairs right now!