S20 Ultra on T-Mobile: No push notifications whatsoever.

[userMNQ8Z0RtI1]

Hey all! I'm running into an issue where it appears the Google push notifications (which a majority of apps) just simply don't work at all. It's as though my device doesn't receive them, until randomly once or twice a week I'll just get a massive amount of backlogged notifications.

This issue started after the September security update - that update was weird, my phone was stuck "Finishing update" for a week on end until I did some research and had to boot into safe mode to get out of that. I had noticed while waiting on it to "finish" the update that (most) of my notifications stopped. Another issue I noticed is that Google Play Store downloads didn't work at all - they were completley broken and would get stuck on "waiting for download".

So I had two issues - majority of my notifications weren't working, and I couldn't download new updates or new apps (unless I went through a third party). This issue was persistent on both WiFi and cellular.

After trying every online guide I could find to no avail (wiping cache of various apps, logging out and into google, wiping cache partition, etc.), I did a factory reset and restored from a smart switch backup. Unfortunately that didn't work, and the same issue was persistent. Thinking maybe something had gone "corrupt" during the September update I did a full firmware reinstall using smart switch on PC. Which downloaded the firmware from Samsung and flashed it to my phone.

This didn't work either. Downloads worked for a few hours then stopped. This time around I also didn't restore from a backup only installing a few essential apps (social, email, etc.).

Samsung chat support was/is useless.

I was able to get into the Android 11 beta and update to that OTA. No hiccups during that update, and now my Google Play Store downloads work! But still no push notifications from any app that uses Google's push service. So apps that "poll" in the background work fine, apps that don't and instead rely on the push service don't. I've turned off every power saving feature and another thread said that disabling notification access might work (it didn't).

I'm at the end of my road here, I don't know what's going on. Anyone facing similar issues or have advice?

[franzie3]

try a reset. as annoying as it is, that might be your answer

[userMNQ8Z0RtI1]

I reset it 3 times already. One of which was a firmware reflash (the latest).

[franzie3]

have you tried a reset and not restoring anything. run it normal for a day without restoring any settings or app except essential ones to see. might be a bad config

[userMNQ8Z0RtI1]

Yup. First time I wiped I restored from Smart Switch. No dice, second time I didn't restore and didn't let Google restore their own app backups. Only reinstalling the essentials. Third time was the FW flash, where I did the same as before but didn't even reinstall the essentials, opting to use the included GMAIL app to test if push notifications wanted to work. No dice. So then I opted into the Android 11 beta, still no push notifications.

And Samsung support has been worse than useless.

[userMNQ8Z0RtI1 · Accepted solution]

Update: Latest Android 11 beta has resolved the issue. Still not sure if I trust the Android 10 "stable" but I'll stick with what is working. I still suspect it's a software issue with some hardware nuance or something.