Posts tagged gmail

This article is written by Paul AKA Munkeycop, via Twitter.

Update. 25 May 2010: This method will also solve issues where you get an error message saying “Google Talk authentication has failed”

Introduction

All day yesterday I was unable to download any Android apps from the marketplace, it was very annoying. The phone would constantly say ‘preparing download’ and that was it, there wasn’t even an error message. It turned out the problem wasn’t with the phone but it was to do with a change that Google made to their email service this week.

All over the world googlemail.com is known as gmail.com, here in the UK it is called googlemail.com due to a copyright dispute. However, Google sorted out the legal stuff and this week offered all UK users the option to move over to a gmail address. They claimed the switch over would be seamless but it would seem that they’ve overlooked Android handsets.

Once I changed over to gmail.com my HTC Desire was suddenly unable to download apps from the Android Marketplace. The issue is with the ‘Talk’ application on the handset (Talk is Google’s equivalent of Windows Instant Messenger). When downloading from the marketplace, in the background, ‘Talk’ signs in on your Google email address and that is what authenticates the handset to commence the download. In my example it was still signing in on my old googlemail.com address but this no longer existed (I was also getting an error message stating that Google Talk would not authenticate, a telltale sign of this problem). This is why I was unable to download anything. What doesn’t help is that there is no option on the handset to change the settings for the Talk application, you are stuck with the settings you already entered when you set up the phone for the first time.

The Fix(es):

Option 1 – Not Recommended

Remove your googlemail.com account from your phone then add the new gmail address. The problem here is that removing your googlemail.com account from your phone requires a full phone reset, this involves losing EVERYTHING on your phone and starting again from scratch. Not good.

Option 2 – Much Better!

Go into your google email account settings (via a computer, not your handset) and switch back to your old googlemail.com address. The second I did this and restarted my handset’s internet connection the applications started downloading again.

In order to refer Gmail back to googlemail.com follow these steps:

1. On a computer, log into your gmail.
2. Click Settings (top right)
3. Click Accounts and Imports
4. At the bottom, next to ‘Change Account Settings‘, click on ‘Google Account Settings‘.
5. On the opened page it will tell you near the top whether you have a gmail or googlemail address.
6. Go back to the previous page, next to ‘send mail as’ there is a small ‘switch to gmail?’ link, click this.
7. Then, click the link that says ‘go back to googlemail‘, then on the next page click the next button to confirm (I think it’s the big blue button).
8. Then click on the ‘Google Account Settings’ link from step 4; this should now confirm you are back on a googlemail account.

Credits

This article is written by Paul AKA Munkeycop, via Twitter.
If you have anything tips, tricks or news to share then feel free to email: hello [at] myhtcdesire [dot] com