Android Question Restarting of device is the only way to get my app to work sometimes

[dieterp]

I have a cricket scoring app that's been running for over 10 years. The app updates a website so the community can follow live scores (It uses OkHttp for the uploads). Sometimes during the course of the game the uploads stop working, and the only way to get it working again is to close the app and open it again, and if that doesn't work then the user has to restart their device completely. That always sorts out the issue

For many years I used a Background Service to run every 20 seconds to upload the information to a MySQL DB. I read that services were no longer recommended so I moved to a process whereby after each ball is input into the device, the upload process will then run. This has certainly improved the stability of the uploading process, but I still have instances where everything will be working fine and then suddenly the the uploads won't work anymore. The user then has to restart their device.

What could possibly cause the app to "lock up" to such an extent that only a restart of the device can solve the issue? It's completely random. The user could have no issues for weeks and then suddenly it will happen.

 

[Brian Dean]

I don't expect that I can fix your problem, but I would suggest that you are not the first person to find themselves in such a position. We have all come across inexplicable errors at some time or another. I recently discovered that an app I had written some ten years ago was not working properly. That case involved downloaded data using a private library, and when I had updated my library a couple of years ago I had forgotten to adapt this old app to the changes. The app still appeared to work, but was using the wrong data.

But to be more constructive, have you tried any diagnostic tests at all? For instance, do you know whether the upload service fails to start the upload, or maybe the upload is started but fails to complete, or does the service itself fail to start? Or perhaps the upload runs but it is the data that is at fault, as it was in my case.

 

[dieterp]

I am going to need to dive in a lot deeper and start running full diagnostics. I am just hoping that someone might be able to shed some more detailed light before I go down the rabbit hole

 

[Mark Stuart]

Do you check for a valid internet connection?
What is the user's connection to the internet?
You might want to capture that info as well.