Help Notifications, AGAIN. Utterly utterly infuriated

[mrodent33]

I've had this Samsung Galaxy S6 for maybe 5 years. Dual SIM: one for my clients, one for my life.

I need a mobile phone for one thing and one thing only: when an email arrives in one of my Gmail accounts ("for clients" Gmail address) I want a NOTIFICATION. That is, a bleep. Clients have been sending emails for maybe 10 years now more often than ringing. That's why. No other reason.

I couldn't give a flying eff about any of the other functions of my "smart" phone. I really could not care less.

For some reason, the *****s at Samsung (phone manufacturers generally) have always had a problem understanding that for some users (actually, who knows, maybe quite a few), this "notification of email" functionality is actually quite important. Stories of delayed email notifications are as old as "smart" phone technology itself: the history of frustrations of users of Samsungs (and other makes) is unending, because the manufacturers evidently have never given and continue not to give the faintest eff.

So the other day I got an email from Google telling me that my password on my "for clients" Gmail address had somehow been "spotted out in the open". It seemed a genuine alert. I went to Google and changed the password.

Since then the arrangements I have for notifications have stopped working.

In addition to the standard "Gmail" app on my phone I also installed something some time ago called "Spike" which occasionally manages to give me a notification faster than the Gmail app. This has also stopped functioning.

Naturally I have logged out and back in to my "for clients" account on my Gmail app, so as to update to the new password. But the notifications are still not happening.

None of the above is helped by the fact that you, seemingly, can't actually "uninstall" the Gmail app, switch off the phone and then switch it on again and do a reinstall. No doubt the efffing geniuses at Samsung have determined that, oooh, you never need to do this: the software and the hardware are so effing marvellous, you NEVER have a need to do this.

Anyone got any idea what I have to do here? Do I have to completely reset the entire phone? In fact, because I loathe these phones so much and want to have nothing to do with them, this is not such a big deal: in anticipation of something going wrong with this effing marvellous, dependable technology, I keep no data or anything (other than shopping lists) on the phone.

It's still a pain in the RS, however. Other solutions welcome.

 

[Deleted User]

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[ocnbrze]

Your phone is out dated, get a new phone and your problems will go away. Not surprised you are having difficulties.

 

[mikedt]

Samsung Galaxy S6, which runs Android 5 or 6 AFAIK, and is six years old now. I very much suspect it's no longer been supported by Google and/or Samsung for their push notifications, etc. Time for a new phone I think.

 

[mrodent33]

Thanks for the suggestions, though I doubt very much that this is correct. It was working a few days ago. As I say, it stopped when I changed passwords. People I know use "smart" phones which are far older than this and notifications happen.

20 s later: in fact I just managed to get a notification (including sound alert) from an email sent by myself to the Gmail account in question. Strangely the icon (for Gmail) in the "notification bar" (location at the top) is different: a small "M". The Spike notification does NOT appear to have happened.

I also just checked my Android version: it is version 10. As in, VERSION TEN.

The contributors to this thread are probably trying to be helpful, but it is better to be honest when you don't know the truth about things. It is clearly the case that "smart" phones from many many years ago are able to upgrade their Android versions, etc.

Tentatively, it appears that the software/settings have somehow corrected themselves. This appears to have taken several days. Very peculiar and inexplicable.

 

[mikedt]

Thanks for the suggestions, though I doubt very much that this is correct. It was working a few days ago. As I say, it stopped when I changed passwords. People I know use "smart" phones which are far older than this and notifications happen.

20 s later: in fact I just managed to get a notification (including sound alert) from an email sent by myself to the Gmail account in question. Strangely the icon (for Gmail) in the "notification bar" (location at the top) is different: a small "M". The Spike notification does NOT appear to have happened.

I also just checked my Android version: it is version 10. As in, VERSION TEN.

The contributors to this thread are probably trying to be helpful, but it is better to be honest when you don't know the truth about things. It is clearly the case that "smart" phones from many many years ago are able to upgrade their Android versions, etc.

Tentatively, it appears that the software/settings have somehow corrected themselves. This appears to have taken several days. Very peculiar and inexplicable.

Android 10 on a Samsung Galaxy S6? Is that a custom ROM you've put on it, and not the standard Samsung firmware?

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s6-6849.php

Of course I'm not too familiar with this particular phone, I'm only going by what I read on GSM Arena.

 

[mrodent33]

I haven't done any customisation. I don't know about how authoritative that site is... is it possible that those specs were published when Android 8 was the latest version, and that they haven't been updated since?

 

[mikedt]

I haven't done any customisation. I don't know about how authoritative that site is... is it possible that those specs were published when Android 8 was the latest version, and that they haven't been updated since?

AFAIK GSM Arena is authoritative and up to date, and is usually the go to reference site on AF for phone specs.

Also I have a Galaxy S7 here, which was released a year after the Galaxy S6 of course, and that was only ever updated to Android 8.0.0, and with no more updates available from Samsung. From my expereince of flagship Samsung devices, they usually receive two full Android version updates, and that's it. So it does seem rather odd to me that a Samsung phone that was released with Android 5 now has Android 10 on it.

This is my Galaxy S7 showing its latest Android version released from Samsung.

Anyway, I can't help you with your problem, as it's something I've never encountered before, not with any Android device I've had.

 

[ocnbrze]

yep.....your phone is not upgradeable to android 10. the only way to get it is if the phone was rooted and a custom rom was flashed that has android 10 cooked in.

samsung usually will put out about 3-4 major updates which would put your maxed android version at 8 or 9

and according to gsmarena:
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s6-6849.php

your phone was upgradeable to android 8.

edit: ninja'd by the master himself.....LOL

 

[Hadron]

I think GSMArena might even be being optimistic: I've browsed Sammobile.com and can't find anything newer than Android 7.0 for any S6 model. So this does seem very strange: as others have said, unless you are using custom software there's no way a Samsung Galaxy S6 would have Android 10, but equally you would know for sure if you had custom software (if you've had the phone for 5 years, i.e. longer than Android 10 has been out, the only way you could have an Android 10 ROM would be if you had installed it yourself). So there is something funny here.

Of course that doesn't explain why email notifications should stop. And if it just stopped working after you changed your password then it's clear where the problem lies. One thought: you say you logged out of and into the account in order to update the password, but did you update the password in Spike? A third party email app most likely does its own connection to the email server, so updating the password in the Google account on the phone probably wouldn't update it in a third party app: I changed my GMail password a few days ago and had to enter the new password into both of the email apps I have on my phone (in the apps' settings). So it might be worth checking that - if you can get that one working that would be something.

As for the GMail app (which I don't use myself), as a pre-installed app you can't uninstall it but you can uninstall all updates, after which you will see the latest version as an update in the Play Store which you can then install. Or you can clear the app's data completely and then re-connect it to the account (of course if you have more than one email account in the app that will clear them all). Or I guess just remove the account from the GMail app and then re-add it. But this is all just general guesswork: I got a bad impression of the GMail app back in 2010 and have never bothered using it since (I use third party apps for almost everything anyway, as I can usually find an alternative that I prefer).