Author Topic: Trouble updating Android apps  (Read 1376 times)

Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Trouble updating Android apps
« on: 25 March, 2019, 09:49:43 am »
I keep getting issues with Android apps saying they can't install updates.  First it was just one or two, now the entire list of things that wan't to update seem to be refusing, one after another.  Most of the apps are on the SD card anyway, but I recently moved another couple onto it using the phone's own facility for doing this.  Its a Sony Xperia Z5, and no, I don't want to replace it!  I own it, and I no longer have sufficient funds to buy a replacement of similar standard.

Any ideas, other than the classic blast off and nuke from orbit?   Surely it can't need a phone signal as well as wifi, can it?  That's tricky in my house, you can generally have one or the other, but not both, unless the lords of electronic magickery see fit to bestow our phone signal indoors, which is not common.  The apps appear to download, and then fail to install.  The phone has plenty of storage space left, both internally and on the 64GB SD card.

Edit: I should add its not ALL apps, as its updated BBC news, and the MySkoda app this morning.
Wombat

Ben T

Re: Trouble updating Android apps
« Reply #1 on: 25 March, 2019, 12:25:43 pm »
Guessing here but possibilities include the new version of the app is incompatible with your phone, i.e. its minimum target API is greater than what your phone's got, or it requires acceptance of new policies, or is now not free.

Shouldn't need a phone signal. It will often only update over wifi unless you tell it to update over 3G/4G, but if you've only got wifi, it should update.

Try manually uninstalling and reinstalling one of the apps that you get an error for, and see if you get any errors doing that?


Edd

Re: Trouble updating Android apps
« Reply #2 on: 25 March, 2019, 12:43:00 pm »
You are not alone, I have the same model and the same problem! I find the apps that update OK are generally the ones on the phone rather than the SD card making it think it is an SD card problem. I've not explored further and I can't give you a solution as I have yet to find one, but, for me, clearing the cache of the play store and/or download manager didn't work. Nor did uninstalling updates of the play store/download manager. This is what has been recommended online though along with restarting your phone after each failed strategy.


Try manually uninstalling and reinstalling one of the apps that you get an error for, and see if you get any errors doing that?


The one app that I did manage to update was one that was on the SD card that I reinstalled on the phone so Ben's strategy might work for other apps. Uninstall and reinstall on the phone memory

rr

Re: Trouble updating Android apps
« Reply #3 on: 29 March, 2019, 07:34:04 pm »
Which version of Android?

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk


Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Re: Trouble updating Android apps
« Reply #4 on: 31 March, 2019, 12:27:36 pm »
7.1.1  So far, by uninstalling various of the troubled apps, it has been updating successfully, but I've only reinstalled a couple of them so far.  It's also had a couple of new apps installed for the new "where the hell is my camera bag?" tracker that the Vodafone shop sold me.  I do find it a bit annoying if I can't transfer stuff to the SD card, as that's got a sight more room on it than the phone's internal storage.  At the moment I've used 21.84GB of the 32GB total, and on the SD card I've used 16.95 of the 59.45 available.  I'll try moving one of the bigger apps like Osmand back to the SD card and see if it cops a strop.
Wombat

Kim

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Re: Trouble updating Android apps
« Reply #5 on: 31 March, 2019, 06:45:19 pm »
OSMAnd (Also Viewranger, and probably other mappy things that benefit from gigabytes of local data) lets you store the map data on the SD card, even if for some reason the app itself has to be on the internal storage.