Help Why Are Apps Not Displaying Notifications When Data Roaming in Japan

[Etan]

I am currently living in Tokyo, Japan. I have an unlimited data plan with Sprint on my Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. I have no issues accessing the internet when using mobile data with a few exceptions.

Certain apps (details below) do not display notifications and only update when I manually refresh them or not at all. Additionally, the google search bar does not load results as though there is no internet but I can get search results with no issue if I navigate to Google on the Chrome app. None of these issues occur when I am connected to WiFi.

App issues:
Facebook messenger does not notify me of new messages. On occasion, if I open up the app and manually refresh, I will get new messages but this does not always work. Also, at certain random points, I will get notifications of new messages as though the connection magically comes through.

Google search does not give results when I type them into the search bar.

WeChat does not give me notifications of new messages and displays a no connection header when I open the app. It disappears and I receive messages if I manually refresh in the app.

Google play does not automatically update apps even though I set it to update apps automatically even when not connected to WiFi. Even if I manually click to update an app, it does not always work.

Google Photos does not always upload photos even though I set it to upload over data. On occasion it will upload photos.

Seeing as the problems I am experiencing are across a variety of apps, it would seem as though this is either an issue with my phone or with my data provider. However, I get consistent data connection across Tokyo (where I am). There are no dead zones as I never have any issue accessing the internet through chrome for example.

What I have tried:
I have already made sure that data saver is turned off.
I turned off power save mode.
I reinstalled apps.

Please help me out.

Thank you very much!
Etan

 

[mikedt]

You're on Sprint, a US carrier, and you're currently in Japan. So this is international data roaming?

Check the roaming settings on your phone. Depending on the particular phone you've got there, there might be settings for restricting data access for apps when roaming.

FWIW I was data roaming myself with China Unicom while in the UK recently. And apps like WeChat still worked no problems, and all notifications, messages, etc. still came through.

 

[Etan]

Hello, thank you for your reply and help.

I looked through all the data settings I could find.

Data saver is off

Power Save mode is off

Data is turned on

Voice and text international roaming is on
Data roaming international is on

Am I missing anything?

The problem has still been going on with all these settings as described above.