Mini-review of Android 5.0 on my Nexus 4

[shaithis]

I'll give it a go. And that brings me to another thing - where's the reboot option when you hold the power button!!???!

I probably reboot my phone a lot more than I shut it down.

There's an app for that now....

[herulach]

There's an app for that now....

Theres a menu option too. Developer>advanced reboot.

[Smudger]

I got the 5.01 update yesterday on my N4, still didn't solve the screen issue. I think I might have to put that down to exuberant 1 year old...

[probedb]

I get seemingly random crashes on mine even with 5.0.1. I think a full factory reset is in order

[shaithis]

Theres a menu option too. Developer>advanced reboot.

That's gone on stock lollipop for me (M7 with GPE ROM). It does show on my Tab 4 with CM12 though.

[herulach]

That's gone on stock lollipop for me (M7 with GPE ROM). It does show on my Tab 4 with CM12 though.

Im on cme 12 as well, seems like another dopey design decision. If you've gone to the effort of enabling the developer menu it seems like you could manage having a few power options.

I'm pleased to note that the battery issues I was having appear to have gone on the 1+1 as of 5.01 based cm12

[Dooms]

I'm pleased to note that the battery issues I was having appear to have gone on the 1+1 as of 5.01 based cm12

http://www.techradar.com/news/softwa...ndsets-1271938

Was the issue. I'm not having it on my Nexus7 but my S4A is sitting at 89% Misc usage on battery usage, even after flashing yesterdays CM12 nightly. As others aren't having issues on the new builds I might have to do a clean flash and see if it resolves it.

Luckily I only really use Wifi on my phone when at home to put stuff on the chromecast so long as I leave wifi off it doesn't drain.

[HSK]

Been running 5.0.1 a few days now since it came ota...I did reset // format the phone, seems to be running a little better now.

[watercooled]

Thread necro(ish).

So having used Android L for a while now, it's still irritating me in a few ways. The main things off the top of my head are:

WiFi handling is still crap. I'm really not sure why it's so much worse than 4.4 but it's more than initial impressions now, it's substantially worse. See a public hotspot, press connect, it disappears again. Or alternatively it will say connected but signal icon drops very low and the '!' shows up next to it, with poor or zero throughput. And whereas 4.4 would preserve HP captive portal connections throughput the day, it seems I have to keep signing in every time I unlock my phone now, to the point I just can't be bothered and am using cellular data instead.

The dialler is still buggy. Find a contact, tap it to call, and it either sits there, apparently not responding to your press for about 5+ seconds or actually doesn't respond. On one or two occasions apparently it called someone but according to the interface it was just sitting there not doing anything, and I couldn't see/hear anything call-related.

Third-party call/data meters are still useless. Not through any fault of the app developers, something is quite badly broken in Android, which is evidenced by the fact that even Chrome meters data inaccurately. I'm not sure how exactly this bug is caused but data seems to be read massively higher e.g. actual data use is ~40, according to apps it's ~240.

Memory leaks. No I'm not confusing this for a low free memory = bad scenario due to e.g. caching - the interface notably slows down over time which seems related to the amount of backgoround apps open, which even rebooting doesn't seem to fix. Manually going through and swiping off open apps (very tedious) definitely seems to improve responsiveness.

Now this is quite subjective still but battery life really doesn't seem any better, and perhaps worse at times. I'm occasionally surprised by how quickly the battery seems to drop under certain workloads. On the subject of power, another interface bug is the 'charging' notification in the lock screen gets stuck there even after being unplugged and unlocked/locked. Admittedly a minor bug on the surface, but I'm concerned the device gets stuck in a connected power mode which would add to power consumption. I've not actually researched this yet though.

Call connection quality seems worse. I'm not certain it's a 5.0 issue but the problem showing up seems to coincide with the 5.0 upgrade AFAICT, I keep having people saying they can't hear me properly, though receiving seems generally OK. In regards to this, I have noticed the device seems to be hanging on to a weaker WCDMA connection when a stronger GSM signal is available; beforehand I'd often see it had switched to GSM during calls. Perhaps it's preferring higher tier connections a bit too strongly now?

And I'm still finding the extra swipe to unlock annoying. I've gotten used to it so it's not as bad as it was to start with, but I'd still prefer it to be KitKat-style. Same with quicker access to things like quiet mode. I.e. having used it for a while I don't think it's just the unfamiliarity that's uncomfortable, the old way just seems better a lot of the time. And there are still a few other niggles like this but not in and of themselves huge problems.

So my current feeling is, there are rumours of a possible update this month some time so I'll see if that comes and fixes at least most of the above. If not, I'm seriously considering rolling back to 4.4.4; while some stuff from 5.0 is 'nice', there's no compelling reason I'd choose it over 4.4 as it stands. 4.4 for the most part worked fine and had solved most of the issues I was having with earlier versions. In future I'll be more inclined to hold off on major updates for a while, but still it's hard to judge the general quality of a release from the net.

[HSK]

I'm praying on a update - it is pretty pants. there is a 5.1 version of android out there in the wild - but currently, Google has only mentioned that in regards to the low cost android one phone.

But I doubt its long before that reaches the other phones.

[jm101]

Has 5.0 resolved the problem of programs not being able to use the sd card space ?

[watercooled]

The Nexus 4 doesn't have an SD card slot so I couldn't say.

[Smudger]

Google Play can use the SD card to store Google Play Music downloads on my wife's LG G3 in 5.0, is that what you mean? Or do you mean apps being stored on SD and run from there?

[WellofSouls]

My brother keeps complaining about performance with his Nexus 5 running Lollipop. Not a fan of Android 5 to be honest.

[HP483891]

Nice review.

[JoeOfJoedonia]

Theres a menu option too. Developer>advanced reboot.

Is it under an additional sub menu as doesnt seem to be there on my Nexus 5 running 5.0.1?