Notifications only arrive when connected to wifi

[MichaelL_322402]

Hi, my wife and I both have Pixel 2 phones on the 30GB tariff (we recently downgraded from the Unlimited tariff) and notice that over the past week or so, push notifications only arrive when we are connected to wifi.  When out on 4G, we can use all our apps, like Whatsapp, browsers etc , so mobile data is working, but notifications (like from our home Ring installation) have stopped arriving until we return to wifi coverage.

Data Saver is turned off, I've tried disabling battery optimisation on the specific apps, also turned on unrestricted data for the apps in the special app access menu, and of course rebooted.

Both our phones have this same problem and we've not been changing any settings. 

Any ideas please?

[the_owl_0v0]

I don't have direct experience with the Pixel phone, but on my Samsung Galaxy phone a recent android system update caused a similar issue in some apps.  E.g. a comms app used for work would still function but not alert be to new messages, diary entries etc.

It added additional settings/permissions for individual apps restricting what they could use GSM to do and defaulted to WIFI only as the connection was considered to be "metered"

In Android settings I was able to set the mobile data not to be considered "metered", and then permit the notifications to come through on an app by app basis.

Hope this helps!

[MichaelL_322402]

Thanks. I have tried your suggestions but ended up doing a factory reset. Even that did not help.  I bought a non-smarty SIM card and that is working fine , so I think it's something related to the SIM card or the recent downgrade from unlimited data. I'll have to speak with support I guess, or move away from smarty.

[MichaelL_322402 · Accepted solution]

Ok so support did not know how to solve this but I found the answer over on another site. It makes no sense but it might be useful for anybody else who runs into the issue, you have to go into your account settings and disable the adult content filter (so that adult content is allowed) and then reboot. Yes not ideal I know but I exhausted everything I could think of and everything smarty support wanted me to try. More details over here:

https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s20-series/notifications-not-working-on-mobile-data/td-p/...

[SimonGuru]

We all know what you and you wife will be watching 😂😂😂😂👀👀

Kidding 

[jassingh]

Yeah, this also worked for me too - I started to get suspicious of receiving only the odd text message or phone notification and when I got home then all notifications started pinging at once.

At first, I was scrolling through battery optimisation and notification settings on my phone to see if there was something there I needed to adjust until I started to read about the filter that could be interfering. Opened the app, made a verification payment rebooted the phone and now all notifications are arriving as expected. Seems pretty daft that an 'adult' filter has this kind of effect, must be pretty strong! Of course, sometimes Android devices can also throttle notifications due to their aggressive battery-saving tactics. 

Seems this filter has the same effect on Three so maybe it affects more customers than we think.

Thanks a lot for the solution!

[GordonB_2284789]

This has worked for me, just got to get my £1 back, smarty took it from my debit account and then said it failed.

[MichaelL_322402]

Forgot to mention, the solution also resolved the same issue on my wife's phone.

[SimonGuru]

Hi just in case this has been missed if you go into apps in settings me use click on the apps you wish to use woth your mobile outside your home not on WiFi and make sure the permissions are set to the correct. 

Also make sure data only usage is set up on your phone for each app you want to use in the background but beware this can use a lot of your data up with apps that are using your mobile data without reliance upon WiFi so for instance you want your security camera running on mobile data so your ring app has to be turned on to use mobile date in the background and say you use amazon or ebay but not while your outside much turn them off using your mobile data as background processing and apps even android or apple apps that are configured for the phone they will use data without you releasing. 

I always go to my apps and turn of apps I dont use even games run background usage of mobile data in background, and if your not on a unlimited plan for data then you will will be out of data quicker than the ride home from the shops.

You can always go into setting and set up DATA WARNING so say you had 8gb of data you type 8gb date of the month you brought it or it came in to action on your device and it will remind you when your 80% out of data.

Also even on unlimited data networks don't tell you that if you are abusing data and even some if your not will slow you down once you reach 100 gb no network will give you the speeds of your data once you reach a data level as in all it cost them money and they are a business

Hope that helps 

Simon 

[DarrenJ_1847962]

yes I can confirm, switching off the adult filtering solves the problem. No way I am going to bring over my family now to smarty if they all have to remove the adult filter. Such a shame really.

Any tech from smarty reading this, sort out your adult filtering, it's blocking push notifications to many apps like Gmail and Whatsapp

[JamesSmi_405477]

I have recently experienced this issue again as well. It doesn't seem to be consistent on Smarty - it must depend on when they decide to 'fiddile' with their content filter, or perhaps if there is congestion on the network.

Turning off the content filter works. I don't have this issue on a Three Mobile SIM I have (but that SIM obtains a Public IP address and doesn't sit behind CGNAT like all Smarty SIMs)

[Ryancassar2000]

Has anyone found a fix to this yet? I've tried everything including resetting my phone and nothing has changed. My APN is set to mob.asm.net as it should be. Notifications permissions given but still nothing 

[Ryancassar2000]

I've found a fix

Go to setting, then go to connections then go to data usage and then go to data only apps and add turn the apps on

[NigelPa_2212053]

Help please. I can't find a setting for data only apps in the location you have said. I'm really hoping your suggestion works for me.

I've spent hours exchanging messages with Smarty support which has produced no solution. 

[LE55ONS]

This problem is the reason the Emergency test did not work on Sunday.

[KGSmarty]

Really shocking service from Smarty support team. After switching from a different network, I had the same issue with my Samsung Galaxy too. Two days and 10's of emails, none of the support team could give me the right solution. They asked me to do so many other things and now my phone is in a messy state (factory reset tonight). Most of them are incompetent and don't even read my emails properly. The correct solution to this issue is "Adult content filter" off, good luck all.

[Mohamme_2006357]

I just noticed the same is happening with me.

I'm thinking it's a Smarty network issue, maybe?

[shoestorekid]

I have been experiencing this exact same issue on my Pixel 7, but found the content filter was already deactivated.

Instead I tried adding the Smarty APN settings again (as a brand new entry, not editing the existing entry) and this seems to have helped.