Issue with handsets needing (re)authenticated constantly

[cmack90]

Hi there i'm a small business owner and as a low cost method of keeping tabs on my fleet of vehicles I fitted them all with android phones so I could track them on Android device manager...

They are cheap phones (vodafone models) but nothing is installed/enabled on them including play store or any other unnecessary apps.

The problem lies with the phones seemingly constantly coming up with messages asking to be logged back into the google accounts, and while these notifications are on screen, until i've manually logged back into the google account, I can't track my vans as i get location unavailable. I have 9 vans and it's happened to about 7 of them and some of them more than once. The phones are bolted in custom cases to the dash and the drivers use them for calls to the office only (i monitor the contract sims as well).

What could be causing this and how can I stop it?

 

[Jonny Kansas]

Welcome to the forum! This is definitely a strange issue.

I'm taking a stab in the dark here, but are you using a different Google account for each phone (or a couple phones), or are they all logged in to the same Google account?

The most android devices I've ever had active on my account is 5-5 at one time and I've never had much problem.

If you can provide us with exactly what the message says, that might help narrow it down a bit.

 

[cmack90]

Hi there.

One account for all devices.

I'm thinking it could be some security feature from google? Or would having playstore disabled perhaps cause some form of issue?

Bit of a crazy concept to track the vehicles but it was going to cost me far more to have gps trackers fitted and the drivers had company phones anyway so seemed like a good idea.

I'm a mechanic, not a technology guy, thought i could set this up myself and other than the constant "please re-authenticate" it does work lol!

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I wouldn't think that'd matter. While the Play Store uses your Google account, it's not responsible for keeping you logged in, that I'm aware of.

I'm wondering if you'd have any different luck separating the phones and using 2 different Google accounts. I've used the same Google account on my Android phones since 2008 and only been asked to re-authenticate when there was a server side issue or I changed my password on my account, for the most part.

I'm not aware of any official limit to the number of devices you can have tied to one account, but I'm wondering if you're just running more than it can handle and it's cancelling the authentication of some. Does it seem like this happens to all or many of the phones at the same time, or is it randomly one or two at one time?