What are the reasons GCM ID is not available in some cases in android

Question

Hello we are working on an android application in which GCM plays very important role in such as marketing purpose, push some important information to users etc.

It's working fine in 60-70% cases but other 30-40% it does not work. So rest of users never receive any notification which is useful for only to them.

This is the reason we are loosing users everyday. Below is my code to get the registration ID of GCM.

String msg = "";
int exceptionOccurRetry = 0;
while (exceptionOccurRetry < 5) {
    try {
        if (gcm == null) {
            gcm = GoogleCloudMessaging.getInstance(context);
        }
        int retry = 0;
        while (retry < 5 && regid.length() == 0) {
            regid = gcm.register(SENDER_ID);

            ++retry;
        }

        msg = "Device registered, registration ID=" + regid;

        if (!regid.equals("")) {
            // You should send the registration ID to your
            // server
            // over HTTP, so it
            // can use GCM/HTTP or CCS to send messages to your
            // app.
            sendRegistrationIdToBackend();
        }
        break;
    } catch (IOException ex) {
        msg = "Error :" + ex.getMessage();
        exceptionOccurRetry++;
    }
}

We are looking what are the reasons such that GCM id is not available for some users.

We know only one reason that If user device doesn't have a Google Play Services installed on user phone then it does not work.

We are looking some more reasons to solve this problem.

Answer 1

One of the most common reasons why it is not available is that the user does not have google play services installed or is using a blocker.

You should also note that the GCM id should be refreshed if your application version has changed. You should be saving a unique device id to SharedPreferences and always check if it is the same, otherwise you should initiate the registration process again.

It is also a good idea to refresh the id from time to time.

Answer 2

Our team members are trying to send the notification, if it fails, they wait about 60 miliseconds or seconds (i'm not sure) for this push notification to be send again, if it still does not work, they wait twice the time, and so on ...

And you have to evaluate the response from google, there is a error string under:

std::string error = response["results"][0]["error"].asString();

Which gives you the information if a users account has been moved to, if so you can use:

Json::Value newRegistrationId = response["results"][0]["registration_id"];

to get the new ID.