Android auto-update never happens

Question

I have a somewhat unusual Android application on the Play Store that runs on specialized devices 24/7 (it collects sensor data, it is not designed to work on phones used for anything else). I would like the application to automatically update without user interaction, but this does not seem to be happening. Why could this be?

Some more background:

• Automatic updating is explicitly enabled for the application on devices.
• Other applications seem to be automatically updated.
• The application stops and restarts every 12 hours; mainly to knock an application out of any strange state it might fall into and clear its memory, but I also hoped that this would give it the ability to automatically update. Delay of 10 seconds until the application reloads.
• Devices are mostly old phones (HTC Desire C) running Android 4.0.4

This is quite complicated and requires a lot of time for testing, so any experience related to similar requirements can be useful.

Answer 1

Verify that port 5228, TCP, and UDP are not blocked by the firewall at https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2651367?hl=en

We have had a similar problem for many years. Our applications run on school discs. Whenever we click the update, it reaches 10% of the devices in 24 hours, the rest seem to freeze. It takes about a week to receive the update for another 30% of the devices, while the remaining% 60 will never receive it. There is no difference in device settings. Everything is set to automatically update, of course.

As we have decided, our application checks if the market has a newer version (there are libraries for this, but we have our own server that answers yes / no). If there is a newer version of the application, we cause the intention to open Google Play from the application page. The user must manually click "Refresh" at this point.

If there was a native or cleaner way to push the updates that we would like to hear, even at this point in the game. Eliminating users to upgrade is not ideal.

Answer 2

This is a long snapshot: maybe any changes in the permissions required by the applications?

This will require manual updating (even if automatic updating is enabled). Perhaps you first installed the application on these old devices, then changed the permissions, then installed the application on new devices, and then updated the application. This would make the autoupdate system work on newer devices and not work on older ones.