One of the most annoying things happened to me yesterday on my Samsung Galaxy S smartphone: I’ve got a “no connection” error in the Google Marketplace and a few other Android apps I tried to run and check the Internet connectivity. It was really annoying, as some apps, including the browsed did work. Changing wireless routers didn’t work either, for some reason. So it was clear to me the problem lied with some settings related to Android.
Searching all over the web for my problem didn’t seem to find a reasonable explanation. That’s when I’ve noticed the time and date on my smartphone were not correctly set. Probably it was a problem with the battery when the phone was off or something similar. As I’m the type of guy that can’t sleep until every problem is solved I’ve decided to take a break and correct the date/time issue.
Do do so I had to go to Settings -> Date and time and tap the Automatic checkbox to uncheck the option. I’ve correctly set the time and date manually (as you can see in the picture below).
Date and Time in the Android Settings menuAfter that I’ve reset the smartphone, waited until it turned on again, went to Date and Time in the Settings menu and checked the Automatic checkbox again (it’s best to let the system update the time over the Internet) and checked if the correct time was displayed by my Samsung Galaxy S Android smartphone. Now that this problem was solved I went back searching for a solution to my problem.
Surprise: now everything worked perfectly and the No Internet Connection Error message in the Google Android Market (now codenamed Play) was nowhere to be seen. Apparently setting up the correct date and time on your Android device is mandatory for some apps that somehow sync their internal clock (the one of the device they’re installed on) with the date and time of the remote server. It’s curios that these apps can detect the incorrect time but fail to notify you of the problem (dumb programming, if you ask me). Anyway, I hope my little guide will help you when some apps experience lack of Internet connectivity. In my case the problem manifested with Google’s own apps: Market/Play, Gmail and Calendar, but it also happened in the Accuweather app, so it’s not a Google app problem.