android iOS to Android Convert: Problems...

[joshs345]

Hey guys,

 

Bit of a story here... I've been an iPhone user for 8 years. Having always kept up with the Android world and seeing how polished things are starting to look on the green side of the fence, I decided to jump ship this year.

 

Just picked up a Pixel 2 yesterday and first impressions -- man this phone feels like a Ferrari compared to my old 6s. Loving the customization, performance and additional features I now have access to. Unfortunately, it's not all lollipops and rainbows... 

 

Today whilst spending some time on my phone at work I was downloading a few apps -- Discord, Spotify, Reddit and the like. All of a sudden, out of the blue I started noticing apps I had chosen to download were getting caught at the "Download Pending..." phase and never completing. After getting home this afternoon I continued to try getting my apps to install and update, with no luck despite hours of troubleshooting and exhaustive Google searches on the matter trying about a dozen different things to kickstart the Play store. FINALLY after several hours I got to the point where I could kick off app installs, reboot the phone and ONE SINGLE app would then proceed to download/update with subsequent ones getting caught back in "Download pending" limbo. Repeated this six times, always the same behavior. At this point, I decided F it I'll factory reset I don't have really anything to lose at this point. And so I do...

 

Things go fine after the reset, I'm able to re-install my apps without any hang-ups. Only... I notice something a bit odd. I was never asked to update all the default Google apps like you usually are after booting up a new device. Trying to use Google assistant I received a prompt "To use Google Assistant, please update the Google App." Heading on over to the play store and checking the My Apps category I see I have no pending or available updates, that's strange. When I do a manual store search for any of those apps (Gmail, Maps, Google, etc. etc.) they all have "UPDATE" clear as day right there on their individual pages. Now I have to go through manually searching for each default app in the Store and updating it. This being my first time on Android, I see there are a lot of other framework type things that get installed via the Play Store and so I'm pretty positive I could be missing some things. 

 

I guess for anyone reading this who has a deeper understanding of Android... is this experience typical of this operating system? I don't need lessons in troubleshooting or other things, it's my day job. I just really want to love this phone and OS and hate that two days in I'm encountering... this. 

[burnttoastnice]

Firstly, welcome to android . I haven't had such experiences with my s5 so that's unusual. In your play store settings, is it set to auto-update? The next time Play Store starts behaving erratically like that, try force-closing it (I don't know how that's done on newer versions of android, on older versions you press the multitask button, hold down the app icon beside the app name, then select force close from the next screen that appears). Then, go back and launch play store and it should pick up from where it was previously.

 

As for google assistant, I've never used it (don't feel the need to, Google Now is more than adequate for checking the weather and deliveries in my case).

 

Don't understand why you're having these problems with your phone though, I find it kinda disappointing since I'd expect the Pixel to provide a seamless and somewhat flawless user experience, especially for someone migrating from iOS.

[DrMacintosh]

21 minutes ago, burnttoastnice said:

I'd expect the Pixel to provide a seamless and somewhat flawless user experience,

Lol 

[DrMacintosh]

Well this clearly is not how the Play Store is supposed to behave. The only thing I can thing of is a reset of settings. There is clearly a fault with installing applications. 

 

I'm not sure how Android handles resets and I still don't know if Android lets you reinstall your operating system. 

[dizmo]

I'd first start with factory resetting the phone. Then try again. If it does the same thing, I'd consider exchanging the phone.

Did you leave your house while they were updating? If you have it set so it only updates or installs apps on WiFi that might be a reason that it didn't complete...though I'm not sure why it wouldn't autocomplete when you got back on WiFi.

 

I'm pretty sure on most of my devices I've had to update the Google Play Store manually at least once.

6 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Lol 

At least it can add properly

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, dizmo said:

 

I'd first start with factory resetting the phone. Then try again. If it does the same thing, I'd consider exchanging the phone.

Did you leave your house while they were updating?

 

I would agree with this. But are you really telling me you can't reinstall Android all together? That has to be thing...right?

[dizmo]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

I would agree with this. But are you really telling me you can't reinstall Android all together? That has to be thing...right?

That's what a factory reset accomplishes.

[burnttoastnice]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

I'd first start with factory resetting the phone. Then try again. If it does the same thing, I'd consider exchanging the phone.

Did you leave your house while they were updating? If you have it set so it only updates or installs apps on WiFi that might be a reason that it didn't complete...though I'm not sure why it wouldn't autocomplete when you got back on WiFi.

 

I'm pretty sure on most of my devices I've had to update the Google Play Store manually at least once.

At least it can add properly

 

I completely forgot about that 'update over wifi' feature, despite the fact that I toggle it on and off on my phone daily that might be the problem he's having since he's manually done them one by one.

 

As for play store updates... well I usually download one app, come back a month later to download another app and it's almost unrecognisable

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, dizmo said:

That's what a factory reset accomplishes.

There is a difference between factory resetting and actually removing the operating system and downloading it again. 

[dizmo]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

There is a difference between factory resetting and actually removing the operating system and downloading it again. 

I doubt you can do that. I just assumed it did what a laptop would do, reinstall from a partition. Hence fresh.

[burnttoastnice]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

There is a difference between factory resetting and actually removing the operating system and downloading it again. 

Some phones re-image one of the internal storage partitions with a fresh factory copy of Android, but the majority will just wipe the appdata and system settings.

 

Edit: If anything, OP should be able to redownload the Google Play apk from a trusted online source and clear the appdata for it, which should fix the problems he has with app downloading. If that's not feasible then factory reset

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I doubt you can do that. I just assumed it did what a laptop would do, reinstall from a partition. Hence fresh.

As far as I am aware on Android and iOS all it does is reset settings and remove data. Any OS level corruption would still remain. 

 

iTunes has the ability to wipe even the recovery partition, hence a truly fresh install. 

 

If the recovery partition ever gets damaged, and assuming a factory reset does reinstall from the recovery partition, the OS would still be corrupt. If Google does not do offer this they should. 

[NTDaws]

First welcome to android haha. Anyways, pixel 2 was released with android 8 Oreo, it's not perfect yet. And I'm not sure why they released it if it wasn't perfectly stable. Bottom line is, it will be a few months before things ease out. This is normal for Android, don't be surprised. Btw I own a pixel 2, it will freeze incoherently. I think it's cause of a app becaude I returned the last phone that was doing it, and now this is too.