Google account sync and calendar issues on Android

I decided to bring you this information after a couple of hours investigating on the web because my android 2.1 phone (Xperia X10) couldn’t synchronize with a second Google account  nor add new events to the calendar. If you’ve ever experienced any of these issues take a deep breath and relax because here you’ll find the solution.

First of all, let’s start by solving the calendar synching issue. The main symptom comes in the form of an error message (you have no calendars) which pops out on your screen as soon as you try to add a new event to your calendar. This message probably got you thinking (as it got me thinking) that the problem had to do with the synching of the calendar and my Google account and as a matter of facts, you’re right.

This is a synch bug which can be easily fixed by clearing the calendar app’s cache. To do so, you must enter  Settings->Applications->Manage applications and look for the Calendar Storage app (remember to filter apps to be able to see all of them). Once you enter Calendar Storage press the “Clear data” button and you’re all set. After this, when you restart your calendar you’ll be able to add new events without any problem.

Now, let’s deal with the second issue related to adding new Google accounts.  I realised that this was happening in my device because as a consequence of the previous issue at first I tried to sync a second Google account to make it work with the calendar. As soon as I tried to log in BANG! Another hideous error screen popped out after a few seconds: “Can’t establish a reliable data connection to the server. This could be a temporary problem or your SIM card may not be provisioned for data services. If it continues, call Customer Care.”

The natural thing to do in this case would be to check the status of your 2G/3G/WiFi connection to make sure everything’s working fine. However, it has nothing to do with your internet connections nor your APN settings: this issue in particular is related to a glitch which has befallen your Android OS. This glitchs most commonly affects versions 1.6, 2.1 and in many cases devices updated from 1.6 to 2.1.

This issue has already been reported. However, there hasn’t been any direct solution nor answer. Many have chosen to hard reset their device; which  doesn’t necessarily guarantees a reliable solution to let us add more Google accounts to our devices… So, what should we do?

The only way I found to solve this problem and get rid of such glitch in our Android OS was by doing something which might actually seem pretty far from being a solution… but it really works. Just bear with me for a while and follow these simple steps:

Open your native Youtube app and press Menu->Add account and start a session with a different Youtube account which you have (if you were previously logged in with an account remember to logout before).

Once you’ve done so, you can enter Settings->Accounts & sync again and try to add a new Google account. You should be able to sync the new account with no messy error messages.

To be honest I didn’t have much faith in this solution. I was very surprised when I tried it and it worked.

I guess it’s got to do with another cache related issue… However,  for the time being we have this solution until someone figures out a better one.

English translation by Wayka Mariño (Wayvias CEO)