I’ve had the DB Navigator app trying to update itself for the last 3 to 12 months, but hadn’t really put some time into figuring out why it didn’t work.  If figured I was not the only one affected so they would fix it themselves someday. Since that never happens, I took some time and wrote this post.

In a nutshell the problem is that the ticket database was owned by another DB app: de.bahn.dbtickets. I uninstalled it and then could update / re-install the DB Navigator app.

How did I figure this out?, you say

  1. Enabled developer mode on my phone
  2. Connected to it and used adb logcat to see the logs
  3. Tried to install the app
  4. Found this in the logs

E/Finsky (28878): [1] PackageInstallerImpl.handleCommitCallback: Error -505 while installing de.hafas.android.db: INSTALL_FAILED_DUPLICATE_PERMISSION: Package de.hafas.android.db attempting to redeclare permission de.bahn.dbtickets.permission.WRITE_DB already owned by de.bahn.dbtickets
W/Finsky (28878): [1] 3.installFailed: Install failure of de.hafas.android.db: -505 null

So the highlighted part is what told me the problem.

Have fun.