Database Users

[Q] Nexus 4 Update Failure, and Rollback problems!

Ok i know the fourm is somewhat littered with these posts, and i've tried to do as much myself as i can.
Last night my phone offered the KitKat OTA update.
Its a Nexus 4, with unlocked bootloader, TWRP recovery and root, but no system modifications.
I accepted the update, thinking that it would simply update to kitkat and lose my root. On rebooting to install, the phone launched TWRP by itself, and TWRP ran the update, it went thru various stages of patching things before getting to a step saying something about permissions, where it stopped with an error.
I rebooted the phone and ended up stuck at the new 4.4 boot animation.
I went back into TWRP and tried clearing the caches, and also using the "fix permissions" option but still it hung at the boot animation.
So needing to get the phone working, with minimal data loss, i downloaded the 4.3 stock image, and flashed the boot and system files on in fastboot mode. Hoping to get the phone rolled back to 4.3 where it was before.
Partial Success, in so far as the phone booted, but things are somewhat "weird".
Some data has vanished, such as my call log, and my SMS inbox. Other data seems fine, such as my email client, my wifi settings, google login info, backgrounds etc. But on top of that there are weird quirks, for instance if i swipe down the notification bar, the settings button doesnt work, and i think notifications arent actually showing up either. Similarly, the home button is broken and does nothing. And even more strangely the keyboard appears to be missing!
I'm thinking we're probably at the stage of having to flash a complete factory image, and at least the phones booted so i can pull off my images and things. I'm somewhat pissed about my SMS as i didnt even think of backing them up because it was an OTA update and i assumed it would Just Work.
Any thoughts on what has happened here?
Regards
Kevin

ok, so i decided to reflash 4.4, and things are still weird.
Same faults as before, no keyboard, no notifications etc etc.
I did fastboot update image image-occam-krt16s.zip, but that doesnt seem to have erased by Apps etc.
I presume i'm going to have to do a full wipe with -w switch and start from scratch?

Same case, mi phone only works with 4.3. Download the 4.3 image, and only flash boot and system, dont flash userdata.

Try flashing the images and making it wipe your device so you don't have any data left. (AKA Clean flash, you did a dirty flash)

ok, so i decided to reflash 4.4, and things are still weird.
Same faults as before, no keyboard, no notifications etc etc.
I did fastboot update image image-occam-krt16s.zip, but that doesnt seem to have erased by Apps etc.
I presume i'm going to have to do a full wipe with -w switch and start from scratch?

Aragorn84 said:
ok, so i decided to reflash 4.4, and things are still weird.
Same faults as before, no keyboard, no notifications etc etc.
I did fastboot update image image-occam-krt16s.zip, but that doesnt seem to have erased by Apps etc.
I presume i'm going to have to do a full wipe with -w switch and start from scratch?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes you do. A clean flash is a full wipe.

Yeh that sorted it, Sorry about the double post above, i tried to edit it but it wouldnt let me.
I copied my images off and did a full wipe and now its working again.
It seems like the forum is littered with these messages, but no-one seems to know the actual cause? I presume its somehow related to the modified recovery not applying the update properly?

Nexus 10 Random Reboots

'My Nexus 10 started to randomly reboot several times a day after the Kitkat update and because it is outside the warranty period I cannot get it replaced.'
It reboots no matter what is running and sometimes it reboots immediately after a power up but never enters a reboot loop.
I've tried a factory reset and running it in safe mode but that didn't stop it.
I've not been able to replicate the reboot fault until yesterday when I ran the BBC iplayer and downloaded a 1-hour Horozon video of about 650Mb and when I tried to play it I got a reboot and that happened consistantly.
I tried a complete power down and reboot then tried to play the downloaded video but it always rebooted.
I tried deleting and re-saving the video incase it was corrupt but it still rebooted.
I tried deleting the video and streaming it and I could watch it that way without any reboot.
I've tried downloading three 1-hour Horizon videos of about the same size and only one plays without rebooting.
A check of running apps shows just the keyboard and a couple of system apps but I still get the reboot when I try to play the saved video.
I thought about removing apps one at a time to see if that would solve it but I've basically got the same apps I had before the Kitkat update.
I wondered if I could undo the Kitkat update and flash the previous rom to see if that would solve it for Kitkat was not a big improvement.
I've never used a custom rom and not run anyting other than stock software.
I would be most grateful for any suggestions on how to fix this rebooting problem and whether going to an earlier version of Android is feasable and how would I do it.
PS. There is a BBC iplayer option to download videos using less resolution and when I choose that option the Horizon file size falls to 344Mb which is about half the size of the original and it solves the reboot problem when playing the saved video.
So it would seem that the BBC iplayer reboot problem is related to file size.

It's fairly easy to downgrade, just Google "nexus factory images" and you should find all the old versions of android straight from Google. There should be guides online for how to flash a factory image. Just make sure to back up all your files to your computer as it will wipe everything.
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda app-developers app

gc84245 said:
It's fairly easy to downgrade, just Google "nexus factory images" and you should find all the old versions of android straight from Google. There should be guides online for how to flash a factory image. Just make sure to back up all your files to your computer as it will wipe everything.
Sent from my SGH-I747M using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your help.
I've found the factory images and I'm now looking for a simple detailed guide how to do the downgrade.
My Nexus 10 is on 4.4.2 (KOT49H) and I think I'll try downgrading one level to 4.4 (KRT16S) to see if that solves the reboots problem and if not then I'll try downgrading further to 4.3 (JWR66Y).

Gaugerer said:
Thanks for your help.
I've found the factory images and I'm now looking for a simple detailed guide how to do the downgrade.
My Nexus 10 is on 4.4.2 (KOT49H) and I think I'll try downgrading one level to 4.4 (KRT16S) to see if that solves the reboots problem and if not then I'll try downgrading further to 4.3 (JWR66Y).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is a good guide (sorry, I would have posted it earlier but I didn't have my computer with me at the time and was posting from my phone):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1907796

gc84245 said:
Here is a good guide (sorry, I would have posted it earlier but I didn't have my computer with me at the time and was posting from my phone):
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1907796
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the guide link.
Unfortunately, my laptop is running Windows 8.1 and it is difficult to install the USB driver and Android Development Kit needed to flash previous Android versions, so I've given up until I can find the way to do it.
PS. I've found a way of installing the ADB and Fastboot drivers on my Windows 8.1 laptop and here is a link:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2588979
So I'm back on track to solve my random reboots using an earlier version of Android.

I noticed the iPlayer hard crash thing too. I can play downloads, but as soon as I pause it and attempt to restart, or just slide the progress bar to move to a different part of the video, the tablet hangs then reboots. It's completely reproducible, and doesn't happen on any of my other devices.
Apart from that, my n10 has now gone 20 days since the last random reboot, so it's a lot more stable in general than it used to be!

I've found a easy way to downgrade to 4.3 and would be grateful for any opinion on how safe it is and if anyone has tried it.
http://forum.cyanogenmod.com/topic/83985-nexus-factory-images-to-revert-to-stock/

AleT said:
Apart from that, my n10 has now gone 20 days since the last random reboot, so it's a lot more stable in general than it used to be!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Arghh...this thing is a POS. I haven't used it in 2 months. Today I fired up chrome for some browsing. It hard locked within 5 minutes. I left it for an hour plus with the screen on and still locked up. Just frustrated. Worst Android device I've owned.
Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk

Either you have a faulty app or your tablets have a hardware defect. The random reboot issue, where the GPU driver would leak memory and force a kernel panic, has been fixed since Android 4.3 in July. This includes the Chrome reboot issue. I've had 2 reboots over 13 months, and both were cause by a ROM issue. I assure you, there is nothing wrong with the Nexus 10. Try a 4.4.2 factory image and see if that solves anything.

Koopa777 said:
Either you have a faulty app or your tablets have a hardware defect. The random reboot issue, where the GPU driver would leak memory and force a kernel panic, has been fixed since Android 4.3 in July. This includes the Chrome reboot issue. I've had 2 reboots over 13 months, and both were cause by a ROM issue. I assure you, there is nothing wrong with the Nexus 10. Try a 4.4.2 factory image and see if that solves anything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I still get random re-boots in `safe mode` which is supposed to only allow apps installed with the system to run which leaves a bad 4.4.2 which could be checked by a re-flash of the factory image or faulty hardware.
I was planning to downgrade to 4.3 to see if that solved the re-boots but I might try a re-flash of 4.4.2 first to see if that works..
I'm not very confident about flashing and I've had the additional problem of working on windows 8.1 on my laptop.

I am running the factory image, 2nd one with same issues. I'm not necessarily disputing what you are saying but there were plenty of people telling me they had a perfect tablet when the memory leak wasn't fixed.
Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk

rxnelson said:
I am running the factory image, 2nd one with same issues. I'm not necessarily disputing what you are saying but there were plenty of people telling me they had a perfect tablet when the memory leak wasn't fixed.
Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The memory leak was fixed but apparently, it's reappeared for me with the latest kitkat update. Quite frustrating, you'd think Google would be on top of these things. What's the point of fast updates if you're waiting months on end for a fix. If I don't powerdown my tablet when I'm finished using it I can guarantee a reboot during use. In the last 24hrs, it has rebooted on me twice while using Chrome. Quite irritating to be honest

It seems from previous posts that re-flashing 4.4.2 does not solve the reboots and I've not found a way to downgrade to 4.3 on Windows 8.1 to see if that works.
So I've tried another factory reset, but this time I've not allowed any non-Google apps to be installed other than the Photon browser which I need for flash Websites and the Re-boot logger app to record any reboots.
I'm using my Note 3 for the rest of my apps as that is still on 4.3 and doesn't have the reboot problem, but that might change after the KitKat upgrade.
I was getting at least 2 or 3 reboots a day so I should soon know if running 4.4.2 after a factory reset with just two 3rd party apps solves the problem and if so then that will suggest a rougue app. which I can reveal by re-installing the apps piecemeal.

I've just had another random reboot so I've done another factory reset but not signed in to Google so there have been no downloads and the only program I've run is Settings to increase the screen timeout to 30 - minutes.
If I still get random reboots then it is nothing to do with 3rd party apps or updates for I've not downloaded any.
That just leaves the hardware or the original 4.4.2 assuming the factory reset returns to that.

I didn't experience any reboots when not signed into google after a factory reset so I signed in and restored my tablet using Google backup.
I soon started to get reboots again, but I noticed that since the KitKat upgrade a website I use very often was sometimes automatically loading the Play store to try and get me to use their much inferier app. It doesn't happen on my Note 3 which is still on 4.3.
If I tried to close the Play store app to get back to the browser by swiping it away then it crashes and keeps trying to load over and over. If I hit the home button the Play store automatically re-appears still loading over and over, but after swiping it away several times it goes away or stops with an error message asking me to report the crash which I did and the browser is closed.
In order to fix this I disabled the Play store app so that it did not appear in my list of apps.and the website instead of loading the Play store app re-directed the browser to the Play store website which was better for I was still in the browser.
Since I stopped this particular website loading the Play store by removing it, I've just had one re-boot instead of several and my tablet is no longer overheating. I am a heavy user and have my tablet on many hours a day, so one re-boot is acceptable to me.
I've downloaded a Play store apk which I can install if needed but always remove it before using the website which tries to automatically load it.
It is a nuisance and I wish I'd stayed with 4.3, but I can live with the occaisional re-boot that might not be noticed if I only used my tablet lightly.
I'm annoyed that a website can automatically load the Playstore without me requesting it and that KitKat allows it.
I hope my experience helps others who are getting several re-boots a day.
PS
I did a factory reset then removed the Play store app before using the problem website so that it never loaded it in case that was needed.

Flashing the 4.3 factory image downgrades everything. For what it's worth, I noticed that the userdata partition is constructed differently than in 4.2.2(my last factory flash). That could have something to do with it. But also, I've been on custom ROMs since I got the tablet, yet I've never rebooted on 4.4.X. I guess try a vanillish ROM(like RastaKat) to see if that reboots.

Koopa777 said:
Flashing the 4.3 factory image downgrades everything. For what it's worth, I noticed that the userdata partition is constructed differently than in 4.2.2(my last factory flash). That could have something to do with it. But also, I've been on custom ROMs since I got the tablet, yet I've never rebooted on 4.4.X. I guess try a vanillish ROM(like RastaKat) to see if that reboots.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now that I'm just getting one reboot a day and my tablet is running cooler I can live with that and I don't mind re-installing the Play store when needed for continuous updates can be a nuisance.

I finally managed to downgrade to 4.3 and I'm hoping that will solve all the problems I had with 4.4.2
But all seems well at the moment.
I'm not being booted from websites to the Play store, I can use the BBC iPlayer to download and run 1-hour videos and flash player works better.
Google has downloaded 4.4.2 (KitKat) but I'm not going to install it.

Nexus 6p not booting (running custom ROM)

A little bit of background.
Prior to this problem I was running dirty unicorns and elementalx kernel. Given that lately I had some freezing issues I decided that iro was time to update my ROM. Being the first time that I manually update a ROM and not having found anything online I thought (dumb decision) that all I had to do was to flash the most recent version. After I did that the phone did an app optimization (idk if that's how it's called, basically it optimised all the apps for the new version of the ROM) . After that the phone wasn't booting up, the dirty unicorns loading screen was running for half an hour and nothing happened so I restated the phone. When it asked for my sequence a message popped up "it looks like your vendor image is obsolete". The phone still wasn't booting up so I decided to restart once again and install the latest vendor image. After that the phone wasn't booting up so I decided to do a backup with twrp (version 3.0.0.0) and do a factory reset.
Plot twist the twrp decryption sequence (that worked 10 minutes before) now wasn't working so I had no way to access any of the phone's files.
Basically the phone won't turn on and I have no way of accessing it's files
I'd try a factory reset but there are some photos and whatsapp messages that are important to me and I'd rather not lose them.
Any tips?
Apologies for my terrible English

JustJohnItalia said:
A little bit of background.
Prior to this problem I was running dirty unicorns and elementalx kernel. Given that lately I had some freezing issues I decided that iro was time to update my ROM. Being the first time that I manually update a ROM and not having found anything online I thought (dumb decision) that all I had to do was to flash the most recent version. After I did that the phone did an app optimization (idk if that's how it's called, basically it optimised all the apps for the new version of the ROM) . After that the phone wasn't booting up, the dirty unicorns loading screen was running for half an hour and nothing happened so I restated the phone. When it asked for my sequence a message popped up "it looks like your vendor image is obsolete". The phone still wasn't booting up so I decided to restart once again and install the latest vendor image. After that the phone wasn't booting up so I decided to do a backup with twrp (version 3.0.0.0) and do a factory reset.
Plot twist the twrp decryption sequence (that worked 10 minutes before) now wasn't working so I had no way to access any of the phone's files.
Basically the phone won't turn on and I have no way of accessing it's files
I'd try a factory reset but there are some photos and whatsapp messages that are important to me and I'd rather not lose them.
Any tips?
Apologies for my terrible English
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best thing to do is this guide. http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6p/general/guides-how-to-guides-beginners-t3206928/page384. Just go full stock without formating the internal. Flash twrp and see if you can get your photos. Next time back your photos up with Google photos if available in your area. Good luck

JustJohnItalia said:
A little bit of background.
Prior to this problem I was running dirty unicorns and elementalx kernel. Given that lately I had some freezing issues I decided that iro was time to update my ROM. Being the first time that I manually update a ROM and not having found anything online I thought (dumb decision) that all I had to do was to flash the most recent version. After I did that the phone did an app optimization (idk if that's how it's called, basically it optimised all the apps for the new version of the ROM) . After that the phone wasn't booting up, the dirty unicorns loading screen was running for half an hour and nothing happened so I restated the phone. When it asked for my sequence a message popped up "it looks like your vendor image is obsolete". The phone still wasn't booting up so I decided to restart once again and install the latest vendor image. After that the phone wasn't booting up so I decided to do a backup with twrp (version 3.0.0.0) and do a factory reset.
Plot twist the twrp decryption sequence (that worked 10 minutes before) now wasn't working so I had no way to access any of the phone's files.
Basically the phone won't turn on and I have no way of accessing it's files
I'd try a factory reset but there are some photos and whatsapp messages that are important to me and I'd rather not lose them.
Any tips?
Apologies for my terrible English
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To update a ROM all you usually need to do is flash the newer version, but you also need to flash the newer vendor.img of the updated ROM is based on a newer Google build. Failure to do this is what caused the "it looks like your vendor image is obsolete" message to appear. I'm guessing you know this though as you went on to flash it later.
Not sure what happened with TWRP but you've done something else wrong at some point. Best idea (as pointed out above) is to flash the factory images. You can try it without formatting userdata in order to retrieve whatever it is that's important on your storage, but once you've retrieved whatever you need (if you even can) you'll need to format it because you really need to start fresh.

Soft brick or hard brick?? /cache mount issues on N7 (2012 grouper, 32gb)

Hey all,
First post here on XDA and I'm hoping someone with more experience than me will be able to give me a hand! Until last week or so, I was running an up-to-date version of Lollipop (5.1.1), when my tablet started randomly freezing up on me, requiring "soft resets" to get it going again, or simply shutting off on me. Thinking it was software related, I tried wiping the cache with no success, so ended up doing a full factory reset. The issues *seemed* to clear up for a day or so, but came back, and so figuring it was Lollipop related, I wiped out the OS and installed CM12.1 (which was my first experience working with ADB and fastboot, and first time installing a non-stock ROM) with a TWRP recovery. A few days later, the freezing and shutting down issues began popping up again, with the shutdowns *usually* happening during sleep, but the freezing happening at anytime from initial "Google" logo to boot animation, to the middle of running an app. I had made a backup on TWRP when I got CM12.1 configured the way I wanted it, so I performed a soft reset when it froze on me, and booted into the bootloader. The tab kept freezing in the TWRP window before I could select a restore, so out of desperation I tried just doing a factory reset from within TWRP. Long story short, something must have happened during that reset, because it kept hanging on the boot screen. I thought I may have unknowingly messed something up, so I tried downloading and flashing a stock KitKat (4.4) ROM from Google's site, but kept encountering bootloader errors during the flashing and ended up only being able to boot to the bootloader screen (apparently got a faulty 4.3 bootloader in that ROM, which gave me a headache until I was able to get straightened out). I have been able to get a stock bootloader (4.23) up and running now, along with a stock recovery (going with Lollipop now, so stock for LMY47V) going, but that's it. I've tried flashing the stock lollipop image via shell script (I'm running a Fedora 23 machine), via individual commands, and via "fastboot update -w factory_image.zip" without success. ADB sideload still works via recovery, but I wasn't able to sideload the OTA packages for 5.1 either. The common errors that pop up seem to indicate an error (corruption? fragmentation?) on the cache partition, but I'm not a dev when it comes to Android, so I'm at a loss here... I keep getting "E: failed to mount /cache (Invalid argument)", and other errors associated with accessing/opening files further down the /cache tree. Would this error be more likely to be a hardware issue, or would it be a software/firmware issue? I've had similar errors before with USB drives, when they would start to bad and partitions begin failing, but have always been able to rebuild them and get my data back. If something like this is happening on my N7 and the cache partition has indeed become somehow corrupted and failed (but not physically....), is it possible at all to rebuild partitions on Android in a similar manner? I've scoured the web, but haven't been able to find anything that can help me out with something like that, so I figured my best bet before condemning the N7 to the junk drawer was to see if any of the pros around here had any words of wisdom that *might* get me back up and running. Thoughts and advice much appreciated!!
Thanks!
(Oh, I apologize for the lengthy post, but I wanted to be sure to provide enough background info..... Sorry for the lengthy read!!)

Honestly that sounds more like a hardware problem than a software problem.
During the early stages of booting, everything that happens is extremely deterministic - meaning that it should be completely repeatable in terms of the order & timing in which activities occur.
So, for it to behave erratically during early boot suggests that it is not software, but marginal hardware. If hardware is barely meeting logic levels or timing requirements, a small amount of random noise (which is always present) can cause a fault to occur at any time - and that sounds approximately like what you are observing.
Further, you replaced your ROM entirely and the problem persists - again suggesting that the problem is hardware, not software.
The most cost effective way of dealing with repair of a $200 tablet is - unfortunately - disposing of it and buying a replacement.
Sorry.

Thanks for the reply!! Shoot, that's what I was leaning towards too. What is the life expectancy of these tablets? I mean, I got 3 good years of use out of it, so I'm not going to complain, but it seems like they should have lasted longer... Would it be worthwhile to maybe grab a cracked screen N7 off eBay for parts and try to get my tab working with those parts maybe? I'm hoping the rumors are true about Google coming out with a new tab this fall, but I'd love to get mine working before then lol...

Increasing system storage with every update?

I tried searching for awhile and couldn't find anything too related to the exact question. Seems like with every update coming out storage shows the system taking up 1gb more than previous. Its as if it doesn't delete previous android versions. Its gone from 2.5gb few updates ago to now 5.6gb but the android updates are no more than 1gb. Its about when I started to notice this, 3 big updates ago all being around 1gb each.
My phone is completely stock, would a full stock flash delete everything and start the phone over? Also reading the general topic a few different methods mostly for unlocked bootloader., which one is the best for a locked bootloader? I was wanting to do this anyway because I have other unrelated issues with the phone such as gboard constantly crashing and photos not storing properly/overlapping eachother in memory that seems to happen with every update no matter what.

MadBullBunny said:
I tried searching for awhile and couldn't find anything too related to the exact question. Seems like with every update coming out storage shows the system taking up 1gb more than previous. Its as if it doesn't delete previous android versions. Its gone from 2.5gb few updates ago to now 5.6gb but the android updates are no more than 1gb. Its about when I started to notice this, 3 big updates ago all being around 1gb each.
My phone is completely stock, would a full stock flash delete everything and start the phone over? Also reading the general topic a few different methods mostly for unlocked bootloader., which one is the best for a locked bootloader? I was wanting to do this anyway because I have other unrelated issues with the phone such as gboard constantly crashing and photos not storing properly/overlapping eachother in memory that seems to happen with every update no matter what.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Before doing anything rash, you should probably start by clearing cached data @ Settings.>>Storage>>Cached Data. Also booting the phone to stock recovery and wiping the cache partition may help with any apps that are wigging out. Lastly, you really cannot "flash" anything with a locked bootloader. You can, and may later decide to wipe/factory reset from stock recovery. That would wipe your data and return your phone to the blank Android version you had installed last (7.1.2?) and yes, it would wipe/reclaim space, but you can do that manually without a factory reset. Before you go down that road make sure you enable the Google backup of your account so all your app/app data is saved. If you have photos, let Photos sync fully before the reset so your photos will be backed up to the Cloud. Also note that if you decide to unlock the bootloader (good choice) it will automatically perform a full wipe/factory reset. There is a sticky in General on how to do this.

v12xke said:
Before doing anything rash, you should probably start by clearing cached data @ Settings.>>Storage>>Cached Data. Also booting the phone to stock recovery and wiping the cache partition may help with any apps that are wigging out. Lastly, you really cannot "flash" anything with a locked bootloader. You can, and may later decide to wipe/factory reset from stock recovery. That would wipe your data and return your phone to the blank Android version you had installed last (7.1.2?) and yes, it would wipe/reclaim space, but you can do that manually without a factory reset. Before you go down that road make sure you enable the Google backup of your account so all your app/app data is saved. If you have photos, let Photos sync fully before the reset so your photos will be backed up to the Cloud. Also note that if you decide to unlock the bootloader (good choice) it will automatically perform a full wipe/factory reset. There is a sticky in General on how to do this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the input, but thats something I've been trying after every update already.
I found another site with clearer setup and instructions to do a stock flash with a factory rom and not OTA. Only reason why I had an issue with not wanting to unlock the bootloader was because im on windows 10 creators and it uses powershell now. So I had to figure out how to use fastboot/adb with powershell since cmdprompt wasn't the same. Doing a flash of a factory rom indeed fixed my gboard/photo storing overlapping issue that every ota update and factory reset through bootloader wouldn't solve.
Although my original question still remains, the system data in my storage is still 4.5gb with 7.1.2, better than the 5.5gb it was but I'm pretty sure its not supposed to be that big, any ideas why every update keeps taking up more space on the phone? The rom was even 1gb being flashed on the phone and I swear I remember the amount of space it took up when I first got the phone was around 2gb.

MadBullBunny said:
Thanks for the input, but thats something I've been trying after every update already.
I found another site with clearer setup and instructions to do a stock flash with a factory rom and not OTA. Only reason why I had an issue with not wanting to unlock the bootloader was because im on windows 10 creators and it uses powershell now. So I had to figure out how to use fastboot/adb with powershell since cmdprompt wasn't the same. Doing a flash of a factory rom indeed fixed my gboard/photo storing overlapping issue that every ota update and factory reset through bootloader wouldn't solve.
Although my original question still remains, the system data in my storage is still 4.5gb with 7.1.2, better than the 5.5gb it was but I'm pretty sure its not supposed to be that big, any ideas why every update keeps taking up more space on the phone? The rom was even 1gb being flashed on the phone and I swear I remember the amount of space it took up when I first got the phone was around 2gb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I always flash a full images- not OTA... but I've always been unlocked on all my Nexus devices going back to the Galaxy. You cannot flash a full image without unlocking the bootloader but yet you say your bootloader is locked? For comparison, my untouched System is using 4.57 GB. I am running stock 7.1.2 ROM, rooted and EX Kernel.
PS...there is a toggle switch in Windows 10 settings to select command shell or powershell. It's as easy as a toggle to restore the command shell (or switch back).