Help Increasingly failing apps

[lvirden]

So over the 26 months that I've owned my galaxy s4, I have been seeing a pattern of failure to function properly.

The most annoying problem, from the first days of owning the phone, was that it was very difficult to get into google play - the typical behavior when attempting to launch the app has been to display a weird partial screen that is green and purple , which shows redeem, settings, help & feedback and About Google along with a "Check your connection and try again" screen. Only when I would clear the cache and forcably stop the app, then try again, would it occasionally start.

A few days ago, it just stopped altogether. So far, nothing I have been able to do will start google play.

Am I the only owner to see this behavior? If not, what other work arounds have proven useful to you?

 

[lvirden]

So, I have discovered the root cause of this incident.

A co-worker was asking me a question about the new wi-fi password... which I was not aware had changed. For some odd reason, my S4 was returning information over the local wi-fi, even though I had left the routers and switched to data when I went home last night. For some reason, the cached password from the last time I signed in was never challenged, but when google play tried to start, it encountered an issue starting, and instead of telling me it couldn't get an authorized connection to the store, just gave me the weird page.

Once I "forgot" the wi-fi connection and opened a new one, then went thru the login process for the connection, google play work right up.

How weird!