Google Apps installed incorrectly?
I have a pretty strict travel regimen these days for my phone that involves checking out that everything is working, making a full backup, and then not touching it before traveling. Every trip seems to be the same, however, with something breaking on the phone and me being in a place with no data, this time conveniently no Google Maps which had been working fine before I left.
It doesn’t matter whether rooted or stock; something always breaks (remember when Google Maps wouldn’t work for more than 10 minutes on the HTC EVO 4G LTE after an official update?).
The following is what happened on my setup; my fix may or may not work for you. As I’ve been kidnapped to a low-bandwidth household for Christmas, I’m not able to experiment much with other ROMs, and everything is painfully slow.
The only thing that had changed from when Maps was working to when it wasn’t was that Google+ had said it was installed incorrectly and needed to be uninstalled and reinstalled. This should have thrown up red flags, but I needed Google+ up and running for a few minutes so I went ahead.
The uninstall/reinstall got Google Plus working, and probably broke everything else that would normally be included in a GApps package. Of course, I ended up at a pitch black boat dock relying on the wife’s HTC One with the bad battery, a dead portable charger, in the pouring rain, no car charger, wet baby, etc.
The problem with mine was evidently uninstallable Google Apps and a Google update, which was fixed by dirty reflashing the same ROM and unchecking the uninstallable Google Apps option while we waited at a boat dock for a Christmas boat parade. Google had pushed something new and it didn’t play well with that uninstallable option.
Other potential fixes include using Titanium Backup to convert some of the programs to system apps, or flashing a GApps package, but at a boat dock in the rain internet was pretty darn shot and I had the ROM installer sitting on the phone. Of course your ROM and problems with Google Apps will probably vary.
I think I’ll end up disabling any Google Play auto updates next time.
