Google photos backup sync broken after flashing G955U1

[alirz]

I've come across an issue concerning Google photos backup not functioning properly after i converted my Canadian G955W to G955U1, XAA. Another member on XDA forum has also confirmed the following issue though on a US Metro PCS S8+. Please test and post your results. Here are the steps to test.

• Have a SD card in the phone

• Make sure the Google photos app has backup/sync enabled but DOES NOT HAVE SD CARD FOLDERS SET TO BE BACKED UP

• Make sure your camera is set to save to DEVICE by default and not SD card.

• Copy about 1-2GB, or more, worth of video files e.g mp4 from your PC or anywhere and put them on your SD card.

• Go in google photos app and browse to device folders from within the google photo app and confirm you can see the videos you copied. If so, then proceed to next steps below.

• Take a picture with the phone camera and go to the google photos app(make sure wifi is ON). Check if the picture you just took gets backed up to google or does the app get stuck at showing "1 photo left to backup!

Please test this and report. This could possibly be a some bug somewhere in the G95XU1 firmware, Google photos or something in the flash process causes this behavior. I have done multiple re-flashes and factory resets and still have this issue.

 

[shaggyskunk]

I wonder if it's possible that Google Photo backup is failing because it doesn't recognize your device since you Flashed the US version?
Early morning guessing ?

Sent from my SM-G955W ??

 

[tdamocles]

I wonder if it's possible that Google Photo backup is failing because it doesn't recognize your device since you Flashed the US version?
Early morning guessing [emoji210]

Sent from my SM-G955W [emoji1063]

I find that hard to believe because I flashed from a Xfinity US carrier phone to a metro pcs US phone and I still have that same problem. If I try to save the photos to the internal memory in the phone it has problems syncing it to the Google Cloud. If I save the photos to an SD card it has no problem to the Google Cloud. I haven't had the chance to check everything out but that is what I am seeing.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

 

[alirz]

I find that hard to believe because I flashed from a Xfinity US carrier phone to a metro pcs US phone and I still have that same problem. If I try to save the photos to the internal memory in the phone it has problems syncing it to the Google Cloud. If I save the photos to an SD card it has no problem. I haven't had the chance to check everything out but that is what I am seeing.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

Hi there, well what you list is the opposite of my issue.
Infact having the camera store on the internal memory of the SD card is irrelevant for me.

As long as I have some video files on the SD card e.g I copy over a movie from my computer to the SD card, Google photos stops backing up any new pictures I take from the camera.
Im also seeing an odd behavior where the photos app doesn't refresh the list of files and folders on the SD card until I umount and remount the SD card on the phone.
To add further to the confusion, as long as the photos app doesn't realize that I've copied over some videos into the SD card, the backup sync keeps working fine. The moment it sees the new files that sync breaks.
Do keep in mind, all throughout this process, I have NOT selected any SD card folders to be backed up in the Google photos app.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

 

[tdamocles]

Alirz,

By chance, did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the Google photos app?

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

 

[alirz]

Hi there, well what you list is the opposite of my issue.
Infact having the camera store on the internal memory of the SD card is irrelevant for me.

As long as I have some video files on the SD card e.g I copy over a movie from my computer to the SD card, Google photos stops backing up any new pictures I take from the camera.
Im also seeing an odd behavior where the photos app doesn't refresh the list of files and folders on the SD card until I umount and remount the SD card on the phone.
To add further to the confusion, as long as the photos app doesn't realize that I've copied over some videos into the SD card, the backup sync keeps working fine. The moment it sees the new files that sync breaks.
Do keep in mind, all throughout this process, I have NOT selected any SD card folders to be backed up in the Google photos app.

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

My phone is not rooted but using a regular file explorer I can see that all the folders on the SD card have permissions of rwxr-xr-x
Whereas internal memory folders have a permission of rwxrwx--is this normal?



Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

 

[alirz]

Alirz,

By chance, did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the Google photos app?

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

Done that many times, even tried several older versions of Google photos, different SD cards, different video files, multiple factory resets.
I'm really contemplating flashing back to my original firmware to see if that reoslves the issue just for my sanity sake. I'm going nuts trying to figure this issue out. It doesn't make any sense.i had no problems before flashing the g955u1 firmware.


Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

 

[alirz]

I know this is not directly related to this thread but my problems only started after the G955U1 flash, hence im posting here an an FYI for others and also possibly get some help from other who might be seeing the same problems as me.

im also noticing that the Galaxy apps application is not realizing that there are updates available for the various installed samsung apps.
if I check under galaxy apps > my apps > updates. it shows nothing
however if go under Galaxy apps> All> it shows me that various apps need updating.

 

[alirz]

UPDATE: Well ****. Hesitantly i decided to flash back to my original firmware and guess what. I can still reproduce the problem. Im clueless now and dont know why for the past 3 months that i've had this phone, i did not run into this problem before! I copy video files to my sd card in the past many times and never had this problem before. Just to note that when i flashed back to my original firmware, i did not restore any backup or anything. Created a new Google account to test with etc to make sure everything was setup from scratch. So either all 3 of test SD cards are bad or the 30 different video files i have tested with, something is wrong with them

 

[alirz]

My phone originally is G955W with a CSC code of VTR here in Canada. My carrier supports "Smart call", "places" feature with my stock firmware and CSC.
However when i convert the phone to G955U1 , CSC of XAA. I lose those two features. Others using the G955U1 firmware have told me on reddit that as long as their carrier doesnt specifically block that feature then it shows up on their phone. however for me, those features dont even show up under settings when im on G955U1