Latest Geocaching Version has lots of problems (v 8.50.0 on Android 9)

[+51MarLin]

Yesterday I went out geocaching and had a number of problems with the Android app which I have never seen before in my 3 years of using the app.

Before I get into the problems this is what I do when I go into the woods to find caches. First I make a list of the caches I going to look for, then I download the data to my cell phone (it took about 6 attempts to get each list to fully download, but this is nothing new - just a bug that doesn't get fixed). Next, when I start into the woods I turn on Airplane Mode to help preserve my battery.

 

Now for the issues:

1) Three times I was dropped out of the geocaching app to the login screen - this has never happened to me before. I wasn't doing anything different when I got dropped out of the app, one time I remember I was trying to open the list view. I tried logging back in and got a message that I needed to have network access in order to log in. WTF!? Luckily on this trail I had 1 bar of connectivity and I was able to log in. But I've been on many hikes where I had no network access, so this would mean that I would have had to turn around and leave as I couldn't do any geocaching. Is this for real, can you only log in when you have a network connection? What idiot thought up that one?

 

2) My normal way of caching is once I've found a cache and logged it, I tap on the map at the top of the cache page. It opens up and shows the map and all the caches in my downloaded list, so I can select the next cache on the trail. But not this time... At various times during the day one of 3 things would happen: (a) the map would appear in the full screen but no geocaches would be displayed; (b) the map would appear with the geocaches from the list, but if I tapped on any geocache icon nothing happened. In the past the geocache name would appear at the bottom of the screen and I could tap the name to pull up the geocache page; (c) the map and geocache icons would appear but no matter which geocache I tapped on I would only get the name of the current, i.e., just found, geocache at the bottom. I have never seen this behavior before. Luckily I could go back to my downloaded list and select a geocache from there.

 

At this point I'm going to rollback to the previous version to see if that works better.

 

Marc (aka 51MarLin)

 

[+Max and 99]

23 minutes ago, 51MarLin said:

Yesterday I went out geocaching and had a number of problems with the Android app which I have never seen before in my 3 years of using the app.

Before I get into the problems this is what I do when I go into the woods to find caches. First I make a list of the caches I going to look for, then I download the data to my cell phone (it took about 6 attempts to get each list to fully download, but this is nothing new - just a bug that doesn't get fixed). Next, when I start into the woods I turn on Airplane Mode to help preserve my battery.

 

Now for the issues:

1) Three times I was dropped out of the geocaching app to the login screen - this has never happened to me before. I wasn't doing anything different when I got dropped out of the app, one time I remember I was trying to open the list view. I tried logging back in and got a message that I needed to have network access in order to log in. WTF!? Luckily on this trail I had 1 bar of connectivity and I was able to log in. But I've been on many hikes where I had no network access, so this would mean that I would have had to turn around and leave as I couldn't do any geocaching. Is this for real, can you only log in when you have a network connection? What idiot thought up that one?

 

2) My normal way of caching is once I've found a cache and logged it, I tap on the map at the top of the cache page. It opens up and shows the map and all the caches in my downloaded list, so I can select the next cache on the trail. But not this time... At various times during the day one of 3 things would happen: (a) the map would appear in the full screen but no geocaches would be displayed; (b) the map would appear with the geocaches from the list, but if I tapped on any geocache icon nothing happened. In the past the geocache name would appear at the bottom of the screen and I could tap the name to pull up the geocache page; (c) the map and geocache icons would appear but no matter which geocache I tapped on I would only get the name of the current, i.e., just found, geocache at the bottom. I have never seen this behavior before. Luckily I could go back to my downloaded list and select a geocache from there.

 

At this point I'm going to rollback to the previous version to see if that works better.

 

Marc (aka 51MarLin)

 

That is interesting behavior that you have experienced. I have the same app version but Android 11 and have not yet seen what you described.

[+51MarLin]

I installed the very latest (8.51 6/19) update to see if that makes a difference. If not I'll downgrade to 8.49.

 

I went in to Airplane mode and it wouldn't let me log in. Has it always been like that. If so you're SOL if you don't have cell service and get logged off. As I said before this has never happened to me in the past 3 years

[+Lynx Humble]

Those issues might be related to the fact the site was down yesterday for about an hour because of the extra traffic from Father's day?

 

Personally I don't trust the official app anymore. Got too many issues to load caches in the past and also the app eating data and battery. I now use the you-shall-not-name app.

[+Wacka]

Couldn't log onto the site from my desktop computer for a while yesterday.  Wasn't app specific.

[+51MarLin]

I don't think it had anything to do with the website problems as I was offline in airport mode.

And that's the troubling part as I do a lot of caching in areas without cell service and/or in airplane mode to save battery, and even with all it's problems the app has always worked well enough to keep caching. This is the first time I would have had to stop caching and turn back due to the app not working.