Problem with android app

[eastendgirl 9]

Having ongoing issues with the android app not syncing properly. Well today it kept crashing, so uninstalled, cleared phone cache, switched off, reinstalled EN app. Now I can't log back in. For some reason it thinks I am a new customer and won't accept my existing email and password... help please!!!

[PinkElephant 8,197]

Are you on a Free account ?

If yes, what is your "second" device, beside the phone ?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

Be really careful that you've got the right email address when you log in. I know, I know.... But this sounds like an attempt to sign in with the wrong email, which makes Evernote think it's a new account.

[eastendgirl 9]

29 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Are you on a Free account ?

If yes, what is your "second" device, beside the phone ?

No that's the annoying thing, I've been a paid subscriber since 2012!

[eastendgirl 9]

9 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Be really careful that you've got the right email address when you log in. I know, I know.... But this sounds like an attempt to sign in with the wrong email, which makes Evernote think it's a new account.

I usually sign in via username and password but using biometrics, so I never actually enter details.

Have also noticed (just today) that when I try to sign in on EN web, it automatically signs me out. Again, have cleared cache and web history, have even tried 2 different browsers, but still having issues.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

This sounds like a job for support: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. You should be able to create a ticket for an account issue without signing in.

[eastendgirl 9]

I'm only able to post here because I'm already signed in. When I clicked on the link you kindly supplied it took me to a sign in page, even though I'm already signed in. I tried pasting it into a different browser and it just says 'you have been signed out'.  I am now going round in circles with this. If I can't make contact with EN help to raise the issue and I can't log into my account because my email and password are not recognised as an existing account, am not sure what else to try?  Any ideas would be gratefully appreciated!

[agsteele 2,957]

There have been similar issues reported in the past. I suggest you DM @Anibal I. Who was handling this at that time.

[eastendgirl 9]

21 minutes ago, agsteele said:

There have been similar issues reported in the past. I suggest you DM @Anibal I. Who was handling this at that time.

Thank you, I have sent a message to this person and hope they can help. Will update if I get a reply and a solution.

[PinkElephant 8,197]

The other option would be to contact support „as a guest“:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=254668&guest=true&guest=true

This should avoid the login procedure.

[eastendgirl 9]

Well that is just weird, reinstalled the android app again tonight and now it's working again.....

Thanks for all your replies and suggestions everyone. I may be back if there are further problems 🙂

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

Glad we were able to ... help? Give you something to think about until it magically fixed itself? But definitely glad it's working.

[tyoung77 40]

Hello,

I feel your pain. I too am a paid subscriber since 2010. I reported this a few months ago and was told they're aware of the issue but unfortunately it is not fixed. When I create a new note that is larger than 2 or 3 lines it won't save. Then I get the note duplicated and parts of it are lost. This is very frustrating. Note synchronization is a very basic feature that needs to work reliably.

[agsteele 2,957]

@tyoung77 The good news for the OP is that she was able to resolve the issue that she was facing a couple of weeks ago.

[tyoung77 40]

Hi @agsteele

I reinstalled it but it is still slow to synch new notes. Thoughts please. Thanks.

[agsteele 2,957]

You should open a tech support ticket. Or better reopen the previous ticket and ask for more help.

[tyoung77 40]

This is the response I received from tech support from my previous ticket. Thoughts please.

"To begin with, please allow me to further clarify that duplicated notes and taking a long time to sync is currently a known issue that our team is working on a fix. Although I am unable to provide a definite time on when it will be resolved, I can assure you that our development team is working diligently to address this issue. 
 
Our best course of action is to reinstall the application which should temporarily solve the issue. I appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to resolve the issue. If you have any additional questions or concerns, feel free to reach us back. 
 
Thank you for using and trusting Evernote."

[gazumped 11,713]

2 hours ago, tyoung77 said:

This is the response I received from tech support from my previous ticket. Thoughts please.

Well the intention seems pretty clear... Support don't seem to have a fix for you - although from what they're saying,  they consider note duplications and slow syncs to be part of the overall syncing review that Evernote were already supposed to be working on.  I haven't heard anyone else complain about notes failing to save - which is kind've the opposite of duplication.  I'd suggest you respond to that email and point out that your app is unusable if it fails to save more than a line or three at a time, and that duplication is not the issue you have.  If you can also post the ticket number(s) for your support query we can flag them for a Forum admin to take a look if you'd like...

 

[eric99 993]

7 hours ago, gazumped said:

Well the intention seems pretty clear... Support don't seem to have a fix for you - although from what they're saying,  they consider note duplications and slow syncs to be part of the overall syncing review that Evernote were already supposed to be working on.

 

This is what I'm afraid of, 'working diligently' actually means: we refuse to fix the 2 year old bugs in the android client and wait for the overall syncing review. But how much longer will that be? And will all race condition problems be solved then? Probably not if it is designed by the same team with no experience in concurrent programming. I hope that the skilled legacy team has taken over the design of the new syncing framework!

[tyoung77 40]

This is the response I received from tech support from my previous ticket. Thoughts please.

"To begin with, please allow me to further clarify that duplicated notes and taking a long time to sync is currently a known issue that our team is working on a fix. Although I am unable to provide a definite time on when it will be resolved, I can assure you that our development team is working diligently to address this issue. 
 
Our best course of action is to reinstall the application which should temporarily solve the issue. I appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to resolve the issue. If you have any additional questions or concerns, feel free to reach us back. 
 
Thank you for using and trusting Evernote."

[tyoung77 40]

Hello,

The ticket numbers are as follows. Second request: 3608119 (no title). Original request: Ticket# 3578009 - Slow Synching Duplicate Notes Partial Copies

Here's the response I received 6 hours ago. As you say they either don't know how or refuse to fix this and many other problems. Bottom line is I need to find a new notes app. I know I'm speaking to the choir, but EN has potential. Seems like they're just packing features on top of features without cleaning up the underlying code. It's really pathetic. I digress.

I really appreciate the help.

Hello Timothy,

Thanks for the follow up. This is Joe from Evernote Customer Support.

I am sorry to hear that you are still experiencing the issue that you reported previously wherein the checkmark is unresponsive, slow syncing and duplicated notes. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused you. As a paying user of Evernote, this is not typically the situation that we would want you to experience in the app.

I wanted to let you know that this issue is still open, and our Development Team is diligently working to get this fixed as soon as possible. We are also working on improvements to reduce conflicting notes occurrences. I do not have a time frame of when this issue will be resolved but rest assured that I've gone ahead and gathered all the helpful information you provided and added to the report that is open with the Development Team.

Thank you for your patience and understanding, Timothy.

Sincerely,

Joe S.
Customer Support Representative

 

[gazumped 11,713]

Reported to Admin - don't know if they can assist...  it may take a few days to get a reaction.

[gazumped 11,713]

23 hours ago, eric99 said:

This is what I'm afraid of, 'working diligently' actually means: we refuse to fix the 2 year old bugs in the android client and wait for the overall syncing review. But how much longer will that be? And will all race condition problems be solved then? Probably not if it is designed by the same team with no experience in concurrent programming. I hope that the skilled legacy team has taken over the design of the new syncing framework!

I don't know whether the 'skilled Legacy team' have any expertise in Electron based Android applications,  but I'd imagine it takes specialised expertise in both web and mobile networking to determine the most effective architecture,  and in Electron to know what options are available.  Plus,  fixing sync delays affects all clients,  not just Android,  and a different process benefitting one client might not be best for another.  I have no clue as to the actual operations they are looking at,  but I do wonder whether the overall sync issues are actually what is affecting this most recent user...

[agsteele 2,957]

I doubt that a "skilled Legacy team" exists a any longer. They've all focused on the Electron development for four years.

[tyoung77 40]

This is the response I received from tech support from my previous ticket. Thoughts please.

"To begin with, please allow me to further clarify that duplicated notes and taking a long time to sync is currently a known issue that our team is working on a fix. Although I am unable to provide a definite time on when it will be resolved, I can assure you that our development team is working diligently to address this issue. 
 
Our best course of action is to reinstall the application which should temporarily solve the issue. I appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to resolve the issue. If you have any additional questions or concerns, feel free to reach us back. 
 
Thank you for using and trusting Evernote."

[agsteele 2,957]

Seems like a clear statement. They are aware of the issue but don't know how long it will take to resolve.

[tyoung77 40]

This is the response I received from tech support from my previous ticket. Thoughts please.

"To begin with, please allow me to further clarify that duplicated notes and taking a long time to sync is currently a known issue that our team is working on a fix. Although I am unable to provide a definite time on when it will be resolved, I can assure you that our development team is working diligently to address this issue. 
 
Our best course of action is to reinstall the application which should temporarily solve the issue. I appreciate your patience and understanding while we work to resolve the issue. If you have any additional questions or concerns, feel free to reach us back. 
 
Thank you for using and trusting Evernote."

[tyoung77 40]

As you can see, tech support thanked me for "using and trusting Evernote". It ain't easy. Knowing the issues and not how long it will take to fix them is proof that they have lost control of the software.  As a paying customer I want a plan and a timeframe not just "we know it's broke". This is the buggiest piece of software I regularly use. They need to STOP adding features until they get the underlying code stabilized or it will never be fixed. 

Thanks for the help.

[tyoung77 40]

4 hours ago, agsteele said:

I doubt that a "skilled Legacy team" exists a any longer. They've all focused on the Electron development for four years.

They've wasted four years and all they have to show for it is a buggy piece of software. Wow!

[gazumped 11,713]

4 minutes ago, tyoung77 said:

They've wasted four years and all they have to show for it is a buggy piece of software. Wow!

...And an app which runs (mostly) with the same UI under several different operating systems,  on a huge range of devices and includes new features like calendars, tasks and (apparently) collaboration...  I can't imagine what those people have been doing with their time!  

[gazumped 11,713]

Oh - and you might like 

 

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

1 hour ago, tyoung77 said:

Knowing the issues and not how long it will take to fix them is proof that they have lost control of the software.

The tech support person didn't say they don't know how long it will take to fix it, only that they don't have a timeline to share with users. That is absolutely standard practice in the software industry, at least from my experience as a user. From what I've seen, companies that violate that standard and say "we'll have it fixed in two weeks" inevitably live to regret it.

On 12/1/2022 at 8:20 AM, tyoung77 said:

they either don't know how or refuse to fix this and many other problems

Obviously what you and others are experiencing with the Android app is very problematic. But making these kinds of harsh assumptions doesn't help anything. There's no refusal anywhere that I've seen, only an acknowledgment that the problem exists, work is being done, and no timeline can be shared. It's taking way longer than users want, and that's frustrating or even infuriating, but conspiracy-theory type accusations count as venting, not helping the discussion. And believe me, I've felt that way about Evernote, Comcast, Google, Google, Google.... But eventually I have to conclude that some things are harder to fix than it seems to me. Was the problem with Android v. 10 foreseeable? Maybe, but that's another question, and I don't know if we actually know the answer to it either.

[tyoung77 40]

40 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

The tech support person didn't say they don't know how long it will take to fix it, only that they don't have a timeline to share with users. That is absolutely standard practice in the software industry, at least from my experience as a user. From what I've seen, companies that violate that standard and say "we'll have it fixed in two weeks" inevitably live to regret it.

Obviously what you and others are experiencing with the Android app is very problematic. But making these kinds of harsh assumptions doesn't help anything. There's no refusal anywhere that I've seen, only an acknowledgment that the problem exists, work is being done, and no timeline can be shared. It's taking way longer than users want, and that's frustrating or even infuriating, but conspiracy-theory type accusations count as venting, not helping the discussion. And believe me, I've felt that way about Evernote, Comcast, Google, Google, Google.... But eventually I have to conclude that some things are harder to fix than it seems to me. Was the problem with Android v. 10 foreseeable? Maybe, but that's another question, and I don't know if we actually know the answer to it either.

Agree, arguing about how they got here isn't helping. But, there are many software tools that synchronize concurrent databases. We used one called "ObjectStore" that did this on a DoD project 20 years ago. This has been done before. I have been involved in complex software projects. I'm not making these comments lightly. If you keep putting new features on a buggy software code base you end up losing users which reduces profits making it harder to improve the software. It's a death spiral and somebody at EN should be able to figure that out.

[eric99 993]

2 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

There's no refusal anywhere that I've seen, only an acknowledgment that the problem exists, work is being done, and no timeline can be shared. It's taking way longer than users want, and that's frustrating or even infuriating

Have a look at the GooglePlay store where many long time users  are complaining about the same issues.

I agree with @tyoung77, EN should spend all their resources to finally stabilize their apps instead of always adding more unmanageable complexity with new features. What's the point of  fancy features if the app doesn't work and the users run away?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

Looking at complaints, here or on Play, gives the impression of lots of problems, naturally. But that is not an impression I get when I'm actually using Evernote. It works just fine for me, and I'm not going anywhere. Maybe it's the universe paying me back with extraordinary good fortune to make up for the fact that I can not ever catch the traffic light near my house when it's green. Or maybe Evernote actually works pretty well for most users in most circumstances.

Having said that, I will confess that Evernote 10 will not install on my old beater Samsung phone, which ages out at Android 9 and Evernote 8, which works OK. Yet even the legitimate complaints about syncing, slowness, and duplication in the newer app on Android, while very common here, and understandably aggravating, are not universal. At any rate we do get some reports here of the Android app working properly.

WRT "death spiral", searching these forums for that exact phrase finds posts back to 2018, when it was a hot topic. "Evernote" and "dead" takes you back to 2015 or so. As a charming sidelight on the insights into Evernote's strategies and the future of computing in these environs, there is also this, likewise from 2015: "I cannot agree less that Evernote respects its users. Because Windows is dying, and so many people use/ are moving to Linux, what more comes across is that Evernote must have been paid off by Microsoft to not develop Evernote for Linux."

[eastendgirl 9]

On 11/18/2022 at 10:18 PM, eastendgirl said:

Well that is just weird, reinstalled the android app again tonight and now it's working again.....

Thanks for all your replies and suggestions everyone. I may be back if there are further problems 🙂

 

I spoke too soon with regards to the problem of my existing paid account being recognised as a new account...
Logging in seems to be ok on the windows and (usually) mobile clients, but refuses to recognise the existing paid account on the Web client. So I reopened my previous support ticket.

In the meantime to add insult to injury, I received notification that when my subscription becomes due next year, it will be increasing from £29.99 to £43.99! That is to keep it on the redundant Plus subscription. However if I want more features then I would need to upgrade to Personal which will cost £68.99
Don't EN realise there's a recession on?

Yes I know the legacy price for Plus has been held at the same rate for a few years now, but how can they possibly justify a £14 in-one-go increase for no extra features or expect a customer to fork out an additional £25 to upgrade to Personal?

A hike of £39 for extra features I will never use seems like a bad joke  particularly when they can't even sort the basics out.

[tyoung77 40]

@Dave-in-DecaturGood point about the Samsung phone potentially being the problem. I have an S10 with an up-to-date OS, 50% available memory and more than 50% available storage. No app crashes detected. I'll try closing all the other apps and see what happens. I'll do a reboot also.

Thoughts are always welcomed. Thanks.

 

[gazumped 11,713]

7 hours ago, tyoung77 said:

the Samsung phone potentially being the problem.

As noted above I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 -Android 8- which runs Evernote 8.13 perfectly and a new shiny Galaxy Tab 7 (Android 12) which is pretty good with Evernote 10.44 but will not allow me to add new notes (no empty note/ window appears to add text).  I had a look through Android settings for anything that might affect the display,  but found nothing...  🤔

[bmcl26 502]

I have a Samsung A70 which is running Android 11 &EN 10.44.1 and have to say I have not experienced any problems.   It does not work as briskly ad the PC Desktop App but that is to be expected.

  

[eric99 993]

5 hours ago, bmcl26 said:

 It does not work as briskly ad the PC Desktop App but that is to be expected.

  

Yes, it is to be expected for an electron/react app, unfortunately.

[tyoung77 40]

Closed all other apps and rebooted the S10. 15 line note won't save to the database. Been 10 minutes. The check mark hasn't gone away despite numerous taps. 

I closed the app then reopened it. Only part of the note saved which was verified on the Win11 app. 

Not speculating anymore about what's broken. All I know is it used to work and now it doesn't.

[tyoung77 40]

My original ticket number is 3578009. Title: Slow Synching Duplicate Notes Partial Copies. A second ticket 3608119 references the original ticket. They tell me the issue is still open and they are "diligently working to get this fixed as soon as possible".

I have a Samsung S10 running Android 12 and EN 10.44.1.

 

[eric99 993]

36 minutes ago, tyoung77 said:

My original ticket number is 3578009. Title: Slow Synching Duplicate Notes Partial Copies. A second ticket 3608119 references the original ticket. They tell me the issue is still open and they are "diligently working to get this fixed as soon as possible".

I have a Samsung S10 running Android 12 and EN 10.44.1.

 

So far, it was suggested that the performance problems were related to restricted ram size, but the S10 has 8 GB ram, isn't it?

[tyoung77 40]

The S10 has 8 GB RAM. Mine has more than 50% of that available. 

I can edit existing notes and they synch fine. The problem occurs when I try to create a new note of any size. 

 

[eric99 993]

1 hour ago, tyoung77 said:

The S10 has 8 GB RAM. Mine has more than 50% of that available. 

I can edit existing notes and they synch fine. The problem occurs when I try to create a new note of any size. 

 

Yeah, on my A50 saving updated notes takes 10 to 30 seconds. However, saving a newly created note takes 2 minutes.

After a logout/login, everything is snappy (a few seconds max) but it starts slowing down after a few days.

The problem is that the android client always performs a warm start, even after rebooting your phone. There is no way to do a cold start, except by a tedious 2FA logout/login. Long term intensive caching is a terrible idea as long as the software is buggy. 

I asked the support team in case they can't find or solve the root cause, to provide a cold start function which resets the corrupted internal state  (without the 2FA logout/login of course). That would alleviate the pain a little bit...

 

[tyoung77 40]

@eric99That works! Thanks!

[eric99 993]

On 12/2/2022 at 10:40 AM, gazumped said:

Plus,  fixing sync delays affects all clients,  not just Android,  and a different process benefitting one client might not be best for another. 

Now you hit the nail on the head:  a unified code base for very different platforms leads to this kind of problems. I've seen such 'unification' attempts too often, it's full of specific conditional code for each individual platform resulting in multiple programs entangled in one 'unified' monolithic  program.

[tyoung77 40]

Reminds me of the multiple nested "goto" statements from back in the Fortran days!