"Find my phone" and other functions stopped working

[rayfield]

I believe as a result of a recent update(s) of Android on my (original) Pixel, several of KDE Connect's functions are broken or work only sporadically -- most importantly to me, the "Find my phone" feature, but others also are kaput.

Using kde-connect on Ubuntu 16.04 running Unity (hoping this is not a problem, it has never been before): the menu shows my phone and the correct battery percentage, the correct status "Device Reachable and Trusted," and I can for example ping in each direction; however, several functions only work sporadically, if at all:

On the Ubuntu desktop:
Browse Device is broken
Find My Phone almost never works -- this morning I tried about ten times, and it worked once.

All of these were working a month or two ago. I doublechecked the firewall log and the phone is shown communicating with my desktop, and I have checked and rechecked that the KDE connect on the phone has all the permissions it requests.