[General Questions and Answers] GalaxyA325G:
I seriously doubt it's Samsung and even if it were, then others would be having the same issue on the Samsung Galaxy A32-5G forum.

I think it may have to do with the supposedly permanent and supposedly unique GSF ID perhaps, so what I'd like to know is if anyone here has ever changed their GSF ID (to prevent device fingerprinting) like I have done and then upgraded Android versions?

BELOW IS HOW I CHANGED MY GSF ID on ANDROID 11:

1. Go to your Windows 8 or Windows 10 PC and click here to download our
"Android 9.0 GSF ID Reset Script" package.
<https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnEUQ3JuzW_hgy-GMvGSCXPacpmh>
2. We recommend saving this file to your "Downloads" folder,
but any folder will work.
3. Once you have downloaded it to your Windows PC, open your file explorer
and navigate to the folder that you saved it to.
4. Right click on the file, and click on "Extract All"
and then click "Extract".
5. A new window should appear with the extracted files.
6. Run "1 - Test USB Connection.bat".
If you receive a "Windows Smartscreen" warning, click on "More info"
and select "Run anyway".
7. A new window will appear with green text.
Pay close attention to the prompts to ensure you have a working connection.
8. You may need to change settings and run the test multiple times
to get things working properly.
9. Once your device has passed the connection tests,
run "2 - Reset GSF ID.bat" and follow the prompts.
10. Once the scripts run successfully, your notifications should work again!
Please contact us if you run into any trouble.

I've upgraded zillions of Android phones from Android 4 on up to Android 12 but this is the only android upgrade that screwed up so badly.

Also, perhaps importantly so, it's also the only phone that I ever bothered to change my GSF ID on.

While I try to avoid apps which require GSF at all costs, sometimes that's not possible - where, so far, it seems that the specific apps that are missing seem to be apps that linked in the Google-provided GSF code (although I'm not 100% certain of that yet).

While I'm not fully sure of those facts above, my hypothesis is that Google never tested Android updates with the expectation that the GSF ID might have changed, and that therefore "something" (perhaps indexing?) in the Android update process sensed the change in the GSF ID, and hence, it wiped out those apps, where only Nova remembered they were there.

My suspicion is the Android indexing process that occurs AFTER an Android update simply deleted any app that had a different GSF ID from what the phone currently used, but only if that app linked in the nefarious GSF code in the first place.

If true, this is perhaps the tip of the iceberg on a far bigger scandal than it might sound as it has direct implication for the lack of privacy of billions of Android phones which can easily be fingerprinted by their apps alone.

Anyway, the GSF ID causing this problem is only a suspicion of mine, where I should presume Google to be innocent until proven guilty. :)

For those who don't know what a GSF ID is, if you don't know what your own supposedly unique GSF ID is, lots of free apps will tell you what your GSF ID is.

Here are just two good device id reporting apps (both of which are free, ad free, gsf free, well rated, etc.) that I used for those screenshots below.

Evozi device id

RedPhx device id

If you've changed your GSF ID and if you then subsequently migrated from Android 11 to Android 12, I definitely want to hear from you because I suspect this will happen to anyone who does that (if my hypothesis is correct that is).