• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Can't sign in/set up new phone. Please help!

Bino5150

Lurker
Oct 9, 2019
1
0
My wife just purchased a new (referb) unlocked S9+ from Amazon. However, when going through the setup process, it keeps saying "Couldn't sign in. There was a problem communication with the Google Server". I managed to play around with it and skip all of the sign in stuff in the setup process to get to the home screen of the phone, and we tried to sign in again from there with no luck. At one point, it made me take the SIM out of her old phone to continue, so that's in there now and *should* be able to use the cellular network. It's also not wanting to maintain a connection to either of our wifi networks for some reason, even though there is no issue with the wifi. I'm an iPhone guy myself, so I have absolutely no idea what's going on with her phone. This is *NEW* out of the box and basically unusable. Please help!
 
Unless you did actually add in your home WiFi network previously, since it's a first time usage situation the phone won't be connecting to any WiFi connection, and once you pulled the SIM card out that also removes any access to a cellular connection. With no online access that phone cannot authenticate itself to any Google account.
Since you were able to get it past that initial set up process, confirm your home WiFi network is established (try rebooting your router if there's a problem) and/or put the SIM back in and check that it's detected (look in the Settings menu). Reboot the phone and try again, the phone does need some kind of online connectivity and you'll need to add in an active Google account to continue using it.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones