A bit long-winded but here it goes …
My understanding is that the HA Companion App uses the underlying Matter/Thread framework supplied by Android, and that the first phase of commissioning involves the underlying framework trying to contact the device via Bluetooth, and give it the Thread credentials for the device to join the Thread network, and if successful, the framework will continue to create its own Matter Fabric and get the device to join that Fabric via the mobile device’s WiFi. If this works, then in the next phase of commissioning, the HA Companion App will then talk to the HA Matter Server to commission the device by “sharing” the device with a newly created HA Matter Fabric via HA’s LAN port.
It is my understanding that the “Checking network connection” is the part where the underlying Android Framework has told the device what the Thread credentials are, and the device is trying to join the Thread network, but has failed. The likely cause is that the Thread dataset given to the device is not the correct one. Couple of things to check/try:
- In HA Thread Integration when you have setup the “preferred network” with the OTBR, there should also be an icon of a box with a key inside it. This means the Thread dataset (i.e. “keys”) are the ones handed to the HA Companion App for Commissioning.
- Syncing the Thread dataset in Android can have a false success. It has been mentioned that if you repeat the syncing process and get the same successful result, then it indeed was successful, otherwise you should get a failure.
- Android uses and keeps the first Thread dataset that it learned about, and apparently does not do anything with any other Thread datasets it has. So if by chance there was a different Thread dataset used beforehand, then synching the datasets probably wont do any good. The fix is said to involve clearing out Google Play store which can also remove other data you may want to keep.
If all of that looks good, then the next possibility is that the mobile device was unable to receive mDNS advertisements from the HA OTBR advertising the newly joined Thread device. This could happen if the HA LAN is not bridged to the mobile device’s WiFi network.
Hope this helps.