I have the worst phone in the world. Been having problems with “low storage” forever. So I went to the Sprint store (yeah, 15+ yr. Sprint subscriber, no complaints with them) to check my options. My conract is up in 6 mos., so I will struggle thru, use my tablet for things etc., but the woman looked at it, and said a new card won’t really help, as the phone has next to no internal storage. She recommended a “hard re-start” and warned me that it would wipe just about everything. OK. I don’t use many apps., but figured I could reload the ones I use almost daily. So she did whatever that means–I mean she did explain it, but I was flying between meetings, and didn’t listen well, I guess. So now, I go in and try to reinstall apps. And they say they’re installed. But the widgets aren’t there-not anywhere, not in downloads, settings or anyplace. Since it’s an Android, I wanted to check the Google “Play Store” but it’s gone too, which seems strange for an Android. Any ideas. or am I appless for the next 6 months, after which I guess I will have to become a cliche and buy the Iphone. Any help here?
Some android phones are castrated because they have a too small /data/data partition, which is where apps live.
Go back to the Sprint store, explain to whomever is there (who hopefully won’t be the same person, but even if it is) **exactly **what happened, and ask them to get things working again.
The Google Play store, in particular, should be findable - and if it isn’t, the phone hasn’t been set back to factory specs the way they said it would.
It’s in the Sprint Store’s interest to get your phone working again, since their action seems to have semi-bricked it.
When you say this:
…what do you mean? What are you doing to try and reinstall apps (since you don’t have a Play app) and what’s the exact message you’re getting saying they’re already installed? (and where does it come from?)
Also, are you just talking about the icons missing from your home screens? What if you go into the whole apps list? (Depending on your phone, it might look like a checkerboard icon.) Otherwise, just hit “Menu” then “Manage Apps” - are all the apps you’re looking for in there?
If so, and the apps are installed, but you just don’t have icons on your home screen, you can just long-press an empty space on the screen, select “Shortcuts” then “Applications” to add whichever icons you want.
If you really don’t have any apps installed, including the Play store (Are you sure there’s no app called “Market”, which is the old name?), you might want to check this support page. Though, it would have helped if you told us the make/model.
If none of that worked, you might want to check if there are any system updates available. First make sure you’re on wifi, and press “Menu” then “Settings” then “About Phone” then “System Updates” and see if it needs to install anything.
ETA: Another thing to try is to go to the play.google.com in your default browser, login, and see if you can access your apps through there.
The apps are there, when I go online on my laptop, in the Play store.
If I go on my phone via the brower to reinstall, it says “installed.”
They are not in “Manage apps.”
I have been to the site you named, and nada. I wasn’t signed in on Google Talk, so I did, but nothing. And I did do a restart.
Just hating taking time to go once again to Sprint.
What kind of phone do you have? It’s possible that when you reset, Google Play went away and it reverted to Android Market. Once you go into Android Market, you should be able to go into My Apps and reinstall all the ones you installed previously. Eventually the phone should reinstall Google Play. Make sure you’ve added your Google account back on the phone.
Thank you, Voltaire & Aestivalis–that was exactly the problem, Market was still there (auto-updated over nite to PlayStore) so I was able to do as suggested. You have no idea how much I appreciate the help!!