Database Users

[Q] Any reason *NOT* to do the OTA Gingerbread update?

First, a bit of background. My wife won't let me root her Epic, mostly because she's had to return it 3 times for hardware failures and it's annoying to have to wipe the phone each time.
I told her to hold off on downloading the OTA update to Gingerbread, to make sure there aren't any crippling bugs that show themselves after the masses get a hold of it.
Is there any reason that she should stay away from the OTA update?

None go ahead and update
Sent from my Nexus S 4G using xda premium

I'm not rooted, updated to GB, but I'm getting random reboots and freeze ups (had to pull battery each time). Other than that it's good to go. Battery lasts longer, but WI-FI range decreased.

If she won't let you root it and put on a GOOD ROM then the next best thing is the OTA so go ahead. It is easier to root on froyo and then flash a GB ROM though. I know a few "stockies" and they love it. No issues with their phones at all.

Before I rooted, EI22 was fast and stable. But I was getting problems keeping the GPS connected and WIFI was not as stable as in froyo. The only other problem I noticed is not being able to change the volume while the phone is next to my ear. Rooting and installing ACS ICS solved most of these

Don't wipe you're phone after the
Update, it will break wifi.
Sent from my Epic 4G using Tapatalk

Ha-ha. My wife is the same with her epic.
Upgrade to gingerbread. It's much better even in stock form.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I'm on stock GB, lets see ..
1. weak GPS (i've never had gps issues before)
2. keyboard lag on physical keyboard
3. screen likes to come on during calls and then my cheek hangs up on people (lots of fun)
4. screen loses responsiveness randomly
at this point i'm ready to drop kick the phone out a 5 story window. so my personal recommendation is if you aren't going to use a rom, stick with froyo. also word just came out that there is a already a new 2.3.6 version of GB coming for the epic. Hopefully this update will fix some of these issues.

wife did OTA upgrade to gingerbread without my approval.
My wife has the original Epic and did the OTA upgrade herself, but has been complaining that battery life is far worst. It's been about 2 weeks maybe.
So I did a factory reset and so far so good. However, it's only been a few hours since I wiped it so only time will tell. I'm told wifi is buggy now from reading other posts, and will report back on that aspect.
If the battery life still suck, I'm going to be forced to root this damn thing and flash it with a battery saving rom.
Any suggestions? I'm new to the OG Epic when it comes to modding.... I'm on a rooted EpicTouch via Starburst.
going to start looking for a stable rom.....
thanks!

Thanks everyone. I kinda figured that there would be some common issues with gingerbread that they'll need to release a maintenance update for in a couple weeks.
I've been running CleanGB on mine and it's been awesome.

oh yeah i forgot to mention weak wifi. i can be 10 feet from the router and get 1 bar on wifi.

I used the flash update for GB that was posted here a while back and I can't say I've noticed any considerable improvements or diminution in quality apart from the GPS which appears worse than before. Battery life may be a bit better than it was under Froyo but there's no real incentive to upgrade from Froyo as far as I can tell.
A friend who installed via the OTA has been dealing with very poor battery life ever since - he says that Android System usage is up over 64% and is awake time is considerably longer than the time is screen is on for whatever reason. He told me he normally leaves GPS on all the time but the usage shows very minimal resources going to GPS. also, he never turns on WiFi and he's in a very strong signal area.

Wifi is fine here. Solid connection from a story away. If. I'm in the same room I get full bars and 65mbps link.
Also zero reboots on two household epics since the update.
But dude, you've got to put on a kernel to fix the keyboard. My wife thought I was a god when I did that for her on froyo, there was no question it had to be done again in gb. She sends hundreds of texts a week (over 2k texts in a month not uncommon) and the keyfix saves what must add up to hours a month in retyping.
Running swupdate or odin takes 5 minutes, tops 10...
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I just got the message that I could install Gingerbread, but then it failed. Not sure why but Clockwork broke it.
So my question is, does GB fix the bluetooth problem involving wiimotes?

If she won't let you root it, then go ahead an OTA, if she has issues *let's hope so* then you'll be able to root and fix her issues.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

I have the same issue. My wife has an Epic and she doesn't want me to change from stock. We just did the OTA GB update about a month ago and it broke a WHOLE bunch of stuff.
1) Random mic feedback/squealing.
2) 3G turns off unexpectedly, so when 4G isn't available we get no data service.
3) Gmail contact sync broke, getting google.apps. error message.
About to throw this thing off the roof. Maybe I'll convince her to let me go to Cyanogen 7.

I think most had all these issues because ota updates imo are a horrible and unreliable way to update. Especially updating over existing data from a previous build of android. Yea it sucks starting over, but... when you do it wipes everything clean and I rarely hear of people have those issues when it's done that way. I had issues myself at one point. Did a fresh odin install, formatted data, updated, formatted data again, then reinstalled everything fresh and haven't had any issues since. Like no issues at all.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

I updated from Stock EC05 (Froyo) to stock EI22 (GB) as soon as the google download was available. That should be the same as OTA. I was in a rush b/c I tought the stability of GPS and bluetooth was bad on Froyo. I was wrong. The GPS was completely unusable after the update--GPS apps usually froze within 5min (GPS Status & CardioTrainer) and required multiple reboots to fix. Just a mess.
I was planning to do a factory reset and a clean install, but then I stumbled across GPS_fix for EI22. So I flashed the GPS_fix and it was stable after that.
After investing the time with time making sure I understood the process and how to back up and restore everything that was important to me. It is pretty painless.
Initially I did not consider rooting b/c that would preclude software support by Sprint. Well the couple times I went to the store for that, I was not impressed. If I know zero, I they know less than zero. So that is worthless. So why suffer for $100/mo when I don't need to. And Sprint still gets $100/mo, a Win-Win.
CWM5/CleanGB 1.0

Root it and throw CleanGB 1.0 on it in the middle of the night after backing up everything so she doesn't know you did anything to it. After she says how nice the new "Update from Sprint" is, then tell her you rooted it.
Problem solved!
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

CM based roms have better battery life than Vanilla CM

Hey guys, i have made an observation recently.
i have been using CM nightlies for about a month or two now, and i have noticed the battery to be quite, meh
standby times are pretty terrible tbh.
so i tried carbon rom and noticed the standby times were much better along with the screen time.
with cm nightlies, i have used several battery monitoring apps and i have come to the conclusion that the phone isnt sleeping properly,
or some sort of app is waking the phone a lot, these being system apps.
can anyone confirm this? thanks

I can confirm.
But I can also confirm that no CM based comes even close to stock based roms when it comes to battery life
Same settings being used I get 5.5~6h of screen time on a stock based vs 3.5-4.25h I get on a CM. And idle times are pretty much awful on CM. Every update theres always something new draining the battery.

[Q] Will a bad (swollen) battery affect performance of the phone?

I spent two years abroad in a country where I couldn't use my Droid X. I just moved back stateside and decided to use it again. I noticed that my battery is starting to swell, so I ordered a new one (but it's not here yet).
My problem is that the phone is running very slow. I updated the rom to the CM11 and then tried another rom for the KitKat version. Both of them are very glitchy and slow. I don't mind testing more roms to see what works best, but if my battery is affecting performance then I'm better off waiting until the new one gets here. On the other hand, if the battery doesn't affect the performance then I'll just download some other roms and go through a process of elimination to see what works best. So, do I wait for the new one or go ahead and start testing now?
Thanks guys.

Sudden drop in battery performance on my Nexus 6P(no rogue 3rd party apps).

Hello everyone!
So I have been having these battery issues since April security patch. the phone gets really warm to the touch even by doing the simplest of things like browsing and watching youtube. Android OS keeps the phone awake 80% of the time and I am only getting 2-3 hours of use throughout the day. Restored the phone to factory settings(fresh start, nothing restored) three days ago and still the same issue. Android OS drains the battery life even though I made sure that only google apps are installed on the phone.
But today things got even weirder. I disabled Google Now and location services as a test and the battery drain and heat issues were gone temporarily. I was getting a great battery performance from morning to afternoon. I check my battery stats and I notice that Google services mysteriously drained 17% of my battery life and that it's been running for 21 days straight? That's impossible since I just did a fresh reset to the phone three days ago. I rebooted the phone and that "Google services" drain changed to WiFi instead?! That's crazy!
I contacted Google store support team and they have been really helpful so far. They offered to replace the phone with a refurbished unit, but I don't think I am ready to give up on this phone just yet.
Thank you!

waelalzubieri said:
Hello everyone!
So I have been having these battery issues since April security patch. the phone gets really warm to the touch even by doing the simplest of things like browsing and watching youtube. Android OS keeps the phone awake 80% of the time and I am only getting 2-3 hours of use throughout the day. Restored the phone to factory settings(fresh start, nothing restored) three days ago and still the same issue. Android OS drains the battery life even though I made sure that only google apps are installed on the phone.
But today things got even weirder. I disabled Google Now and location services as a test and the battery drain and heat issues were gone temporarily. I was getting a great battery performance from morning to afternoon. I check my battery stats and I notice that Google services mysteriously drained 17% of my battery life and that it's been running for 21 days straight? That's impossible since I just did a fresh reset to the phone three days ago. I rebooted the phone and that "Google services" drain changed to WiFi instead?! That's crazy!
I contacted Google store support team and they have been really helpful so far. They offered to replace the phone with a refurbished unit, but I don't think I am ready to give up on this phone just yet.
Thank you!
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Click to collapse
I hate to recommend this, but sometimes things go out of wack after a SW update, so a hard reset would probably be needed. I would try that (just start from zero) before jumping into a refurbished phone that might have some other kind of issues. Have you tried a hard reset yet? I see that you did a fresh reset. Did you go through the recovery though? Not just the regular UI. I think it's better to clear cache, and every thing through the recovery (custom or stock).

en28so said:
I hate to recommend this, but sometimes things go out of wack after a SW update, so a hard reset would probably be needed. I would try that (just start from zero) before jumping into a refurbished phone that might have some other kind of issues. Have you tried a hard reset yet? I see that you did a fresh reset. Did you go through the recovery though? Not just the regular UI. I think it's better to clear cache, and every thing through the recovery (custom or stock).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did it through recovery. I have cleared the cache and rebooted the phone several times the past few days. Nothing seems to help at all.

Turn off your google backup.
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

waelalzubieri said:
I did it through recovery. I have cleared the cache and rebooted the phone several times the past few days. Nothing seems to help at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. Maybe a custom ROM might help? Have you tried that? That's the last thing I would do. Good luck!

Not recommended but I just flashed January vendor and ROM and that has helped my battery life. I. Believe it is the security updates that kill our battery.

shawn1482 said:
Not recommended but I just flashed January vendor and ROM and that has helped my battery life. I. Believe it is the security updates that kill our battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is it a widespread issue? Like I said in my post, I saw the decline ever since I got the April security update. The May patch actually managed to make things worse. There seems to be something hidden in the OS that it's draining the battery and causing the awake issues. I haven't tried rooting the device because I lack the experience to do so. I will probably look into it on these forums, but at this point I have tried everything.
Disabling Google now helped a lot and it exposed some sort of a glitch with the stock battery monitoring app. I am not sure if it's hardware or software, but it's certainly not normal. I am tempted to just replace it, but I am afraid that this issue will just plague the new one from Google. I am really disappointed How Google handles updates on this device. I always thought that stock android is most stable version of android, but the software on my old Xperia Z is actually more stable than this. It never had battery drain issues and standby battery life was always great. The battery life on Nexus 6P is actually worse than the Xperia Z even though that phone is 3 years old.

waelalzubieri said:
Is it a widespread issue? Like I said in my post, I saw the decline ever since I got the April security update. The May patch actually managed to make things worse. There seems to be something hidden in the OS that it's draining the battery and causing the awake issues. I haven't tried rooting the device because I lack the experience to do so. I will probably look into it on these forums, but at this point I have tried everything.
Disabling Google now helped a lot and it exposed some sort of a glitch with the stock battery monitoring app. I am not sure if it's hardware or software, but it's certainly not normal. I am tempted to just replace it, but I am afraid that this issue will just plague the new one from Google. I am really disappointed How Google handles updates on this device. I always thought that stock android is most stable version of android, but the software on my old Xperia Z is actually more stable than this. It never had battery drain issues and standby battery life was always great. The battery life on Nexus 6P is actually worse than the Xperia Z even though that phone is 3 years old.
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Click to collapse
I've seen a lot of posts over the months with people having the same problem we are. I came from a mid range LG stylo with a snapdragon 610. I would have 8 hours screen on time daily. Its sad that goggle cant get the same out of their own hardware. Also I have seen that the Note 5 and S7 Edge both get better battery life as opposed to our stock phones. For as much as people praise stock and look down on Touchwiz, they are doing something right over there.

But it doesn't affect everyone and that what puzzles me. Only certain phones are hit by these issues, while other people are getting excellent battery life. I have seen plenty of people post screenshots of 6 hours+ of on screen time. I am lucky to get 3 hours. I think Google should really invest in creating a better power management system into Android. Companies like Sony and Samsung built their own and the battery life on their devices always perform predictably relative to what I am seeing on this phone. I have never witnessed The doze feature kick in since I have bought this phone. Sony had stamina mode since 2013 and it actually worked.

waelalzubieri said:
But it doesn't affect everyone and that what puzzles me. Only certain phones are hit by these issues, while other people are getting excellent battery life. I have seen plenty of people post screenshots of 6 hours+ of on screen time. I am lucky to get 3 hours. I think Google should really invest in creating a better power management system into Android. Companies like Sony and Samsung built their own and the battery life on their devices always perform predictably relative to what I am seeing on this phone. I have never witnessed The doze feature kick in since I have bought this phone. Sony had stamina mode since 2013 and it actually worked.
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Click to collapse
Most of those people posting those outrageous number root and do kernel tweaks. I've gotten at most 6 hours SOT on stock without root. You are right our phones do all react differently to certain circumstances. I don't know if it's feasible to you ,but you should try rooting and trying out a few Roms some help others don't. If you aren't into Roms and decide to root try earlier vendors and stock roms and see it those work. I'm not an expert by any means just my suggestions.

shawn1482 said:
Most of those people posting those outrageous number root and do kernel tweaks. I've gotten at most 6 hours SOT on stock without root. You are right our phones do all react differently to certain circumstances. I don't know if it's feasible to you ,but you should try rooting and trying out a few Roms some help others don't. If you aren't into Roms and decide to root try earlier vendors and stock roms and see it those work. I'm not an expert by any means just my suggestions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the fact that you are having great battery life proves my point. It's either that the quality control of the batteries used on these phones are terrible, or that the software or kernel are corrupted from factory causing these issues. There is no way to fix them by hard reseting the phone so far. I am going to try to flash a stock rom on this device and see what happens. Thanks by the way.

1) Are you rooted? If not, at least do that and install BBS in order to track down what's eating your battery.
2) Probably we'll run into a common problem / bug the last two months.
After unplugging the phone, it seems that the wakelock *backup* runs constantly, does not let phone get into sleep, and runs in the background while using your phone causin battery to drain faster.
3) About battery life. Comparing battery results between two users it has no point, unless you really now his usage pattern. Not only the setup, but which apps of them used most etc.
For example Facebook app is real battery eater. I've seen an hour more SOT without this app.
I can give several examples like this.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Shall I upgrade to 7.1.1?

I have Nexus 6p on MM 6.0.1. I was following the news about Nougat update and all the battery drain and shutdown problems. I read the whole thread on the battery life in the general section but I can't decide is it a software or hardware problem. Is there any sure method to detect if I will face those bugs or not? Plus, In case I face them, does using custom roms and kernels solve it?

kaborayyan said:
I have Nexus 6p on MM 6.0.1. I was following the news about Nougat update and all the battery drain and shutdown problems. I read the whole thread on the battery life in the general section but I can't decide is it a software or hardware problem. Is there any sure method to detect if I will face those bugs or not? Plus, In case I face them, does using custom roms and kernels solve it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There were battery drain issues on earlier versions of Nougat but the current build is pretty solid. Some people are reporting battery drain related to Facebook apps however, especially Facebook Messenger. Google says the boot loop and shutdown issues are hardware related. Since multiple people who RMA'd their phone to Huawei reported getting it back with a new motherboard that would seem to support Google's claim. There's no way I know of to predict if you will have problems but it does seem to be occurring more with earlier builds of the phone. You could get better or worse battery life with custom ROMs and kernels depending on what you use but the same problems are being reported on stock and custom roms. People are also reporting the boot loop of death on stock Marshmallow so not upgrading is no guarantee that you won't still eventually have problems. I run Cortex Rom which gives the 6p Pixel features and the Elemental kernel. I have no problems and would never go back to Marshmellow. But it's a personal choice in the end. The one legitimate reason you might want to stay on Marshmellow is that Xposed doesn't work on Nougat. Otherwise I would personally say go for it. Stock Nougat is pretty solid and there are some nice Nougat based custom ROMs for the 6P. Staying on Marshmallow seems like kind of a waste.

i am in the same position as the original poster: 100% stock on marshmellow. i never made any sort of upgrade to 7.0.
my phone was a google replacment from june, 2016. i have 89% life in my battery. everything works well.
i can get a replacement from either google or the manufacturer. google has an easier, quicker system. i will wait and see how it goes.
i am with verizon. has verizon ever finally approved 7.1.1. maybe 7.1.1 is ok to upgrade? i am sort of afraid. i am not really interested in playing or working on my phone--i am busy and just not my thing.