Mini-review of Android 5.0 on my Nexus 4

[watercooled]

So I recently saw the OTA notification pop up on my Nexus 4, and despite intending to wait for a while I decided to go ahead with it, so I'll share my experiences so far.

I've been using it for a couple of days now so have had a while to get used to it. Overall it's quite a nice update but I do have a few gripes with it. I'll try to keep each point concise and avoid the more well-known issues to avoid a wall of text.

• First and probably most annoyingly because of frequency of use, the lock screen now takes an extra swipe. Before it was lock button, password/code/etc. Now it's lock button, swipe up, password.
• No notification ticker. And overall I'm not a huge fan of the new notification system in general, it just seems to take more steps to do the same things as before. And whereas on KitKat you would see a little notification icon in the lock screen to make you aware of a notification, now there's a full notification panel. This works fine if you set it to display message contents, but if you change privacy settings to hide 'private' details, you just get the same big notification but with 'contents hidden' repeated. What's the point? Where's the mid-ground where it e.g. displays a subject/sender but not contents?
• The app switcher seems to get infinitely long now, and people are complaining of it causing performance issues. Also it doesn't reset when you reboot the phone.
• By default, Chrome tabs are integrated with this app switcher. Now, a lot of stuff is open to opinion but sorry, this is just pants-on-head retarded. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to have to search through 5 thousand previously opened apps to find that tab you kept open a few days ago? Thankfully you can disable this from within Chrome, but for sanity's sake lets hope that option never goes away.
• The stock gallery app has vanished, and the replacement is tied in to G+ which seems weird considering Google backing off from trying to ram G+ down everyone's throat.
• By default, the keyboard has no borders between the letters. This is likely a highly subjective thing but I really don't like it. Thankfully, this is another thing you can revert by changing settings.
• The flashlight toggle in the quick settings menu keeps crashing my phone. This is widely reported but I thought Google had halted the OTA to fix things like this. Apparently not.
• The battery usage meter is a bit wonky. The percentages listed don't add up to either 100% or the total used percentage. E.g. mine now add up to 11%, but the battery is at 63%.

And now for some more minor points:

• You can no longer get to silent mode by holding the power button, in fact the whole power button menu has gone except for a single option to shut down the device. I don't see why it would hurt to just leave those options in.
• The pull-down menu just feels a bit icky. I mean it works much the same as before but manages to feel more frustrating. The first swipe down to show notifications also peeks the quick settings menu, which springs back when you let go.
• As you may know, the Gmail app has now taken over responsibility of managing all email accounts. However the legacy email app is still visible in the app drawer. Why? To pop up and tell you it no longer works, of course! Seriously, what's the point of an app whose sole purpose is to tell you to use another app?
• You can no longer (AFAICT) highlight a time on the data usage graph to see e.g. what was the biggest data consumer between two dates.

Well that's the ugly stuff out of the way. Thankfully, most of the major issues I have with 5.0 are solvable this way - e.g. if having Chrome tabs in the app switcher was forced, I'd probably be flashing back to KitKat. And I really dislike the new keyboard which is also revertible. My most major remaining gripe is the extra faffing on the unlock screen.

Now for some stuff I do like:

• The new quick settings menu is much more user-friendly IMO. The KitKat one with its setting squares always looked a bit half-full; this isn't something which ever really bothered my but the replacement looks a bit tidier.
• In addition, the quick-settings are similarly improved, and probably more obvious. In KitKat, you had to long-press settings like WiFi to toggle, which quite a few people didn't seem to know, which is quite understandable IMO. Now you tap the icon to toggle, tab below the divider for settings.
• There's now a flashlight toggle present on this menu. Although it's practically unusable now because of bugs causing crashes and locking up the camera until a reboot, this is a nice feature to see in stock Android. Once they get around to fixing it of course.
• The auto-brightness function is now adjustable. Rather than an auto toggle or full-manual brightness, you now have 'adaptive brightness', with a manual slider to further adjust it.
• Notification priority. Now you can have your phone in a sort of semi-silent mode, where only whitelisted contacts (either all contacts or only starred) will trigger notifications. Nice if you don't want to be disturbed but still want important calls to get through.
• Multiple users and guest mode. Not really a big deal for me, but I can see this being useful for people who e.g. share devices.
• Pinned apps. I've not really read in to this much, or tried it out yet, but as I understand it this allows you to hand your device to someone with an app open, but otherwise locked so they can't back out and do something else.
• It's a lot easier to get to your full contact list from the dialler.
• And probably a load of other bits and bobs besides.

[herulach]

So I recently saw the OTA notification pop up on my Nexus 4, and despite intending to wait for a while I decided to go ahead with it, so I'll share my experiences so far.

I've been using it for a couple of days now so have had a while to get used to it. Overall it's quite a nice update but I do have a few gripes with it. I'll try to keep each point concise and avoid the more well-known issues to avoid a wall of text.
[*]First and probably most annoyingly because of frequency of use, the lock screen now takes an extra swipe. Before it was lock button, password/code/etc. Now it's lock button, swipe up, password.

I think that must be device specific, I've always (I think even going back to N4) had to swipe unlock before code if its needed. You can also set smart lock so it doesn't need the pin when say connected to the car.

[*]No notification ticker. And overall I'm not a huge fan of the new notification system in general, it just seems to take more steps to do the same things as before. And whereas on KitKat you would see a little notification icon in the lock screen to make you aware of a notification, now there's a full notification panel. This works fine if you set it to display message contents, but if you change privacy settings to hide 'private' details, you just get the same big notification but with 'contents hidden' repeated. What's the point? Where's the mid-ground where it e.g. displays a subject/sender but not contents?

What do you mean? Mine is on 'hide sensitive' and I get N new emails etc, double tap the notification unlocks straight to the app.

[*]The app switcher seems to get infinitely long now, and people are complaining of it causing performance issues. Also it doesn't reset when you reboot the phone.[*]By default, Chrome tabs are integrated with this app switcher. Now, a lot of stuff is open to opinion but sorry, this is just pants-on-head retarded. Why would anyone think it's a good thing to have to search through 5 thousand previously opened apps to find that tab you kept open a few days ago? Thankfully you can disable this from within Chrome, but for sanity's sake lets hope that option never goes away.

agreed, hideous. I had to google how to switch tabs the first time.

[*]The stock gallery app has vanished, and the replacement is tied in to G+ which seems weird considering Google backing off from trying to ram G+ down everyone's throat.[*]By default, the keyboard has no borders between the letters. This is likely a highly subjective thing but I really don't like it. Thankfully, this is another thing you can revert by changing settings.[*]The flashlight toggle in the quick settings menu keeps crashing my phone. This is widely reported but I thought Google had halted the OTA to fix things like this. Apparently not.[*]The battery usage meter is a bit wonky. The percentages listed don't add up to either 100% or the total used percentage. E.g. mine now add up to 11%, but the battery is at 63%.
Not experienced any of the last, but installing swiftkey is the first thing I do on any android device.

And now for some more minor points:

• You can no longer get to silent mode by holding the power button, in fact the whole power button menu has gone except for a single option to shut down the device. I don't see why it would hurt to just leave those options in.
• The pull-down menu just feels a bit icky. I mean it works much the same as before but manages to feel more frustrating. The first swipe down to show notifications also peeks the quick settings menu, which springs back when you let go.

[/quote]
You know you can change this behaivour? Mine is set to swipe on the left for settings and the right for notification tray.

..snip..

Generally I prefer it to 4.4, I could do without it looking like windows phone quite so much, but I'd definitely say on balance its an improvement.


Mod edit: Sorry Herulach, your list formatting did something really odd, removed it so the page would function - apologies if I've screwed things up a bit

[watercooled]

I've no idea how, but it seems you've broken the Internet!

What do you mean? Mine is on 'hide sensitive' and I get N new emails etc, double tap the notification unlocks straight to the app.

I mean, with 'hide sensitive' on, it doesn't show you anything the little icon didn't. The 'contents hidden' bit just seems redundant.

You know you can change this behaivour? Mine is set to swipe on the left for settings and the right for notification tray.

I didn't! How do I go about doing that?

[herulach]

I think maybe breaking lists with quotes? I wasn't trying to honest.

Re reading that it sounds super critical, you have a lot of good points, just thought I'd highlight that some are settings. Although that specific one looks like it isn't. It does have that behaivour (swipe the clock down and you get settings, swipe the others you get more or less the 4.X notification tray) but you don't look to be able to change it. That must have been in the stock CM11 rom.

I was wondering what you meant by the contents hidden bit, as I'd only seen it with emails (I get 2 new messages xxx@gmail.com for those) but Ive just text myself and yeah, that is a bit daft. I do still like it better than the old unlock, swipe notification, click notification mechanism, but again I imagine that depends on what lock screen you were using previously.

[watercooled]

Nah I didn't read it as unfairly critical anyway, I was just explaining what I meant.

The swipe behaviour must be rom-specific thing, as I always get the spring-back regardless of where I swipe from on the stock Nexus rom.

[herulach]

Nah I didn't read it as unfairly critical anyway, I was just explaining what I meant.

The swipe behaviour must be rom-specific thing, as I always get the spring-back regardless of where I swipe from on the stock Nexus rom.

Possibly, I'm on CM12 nightlies. Always getting the settings would be annoying as hell.

[DanceswithUnix]

So are you guys actually liking Lollipop then?

At work everyone who has had the update has hated it. Comments from "unusable" to "looks like it was designed by a child". One has already put in an order for an Iphone, his Nexus is going up for sale.

Reports of battery life getting so bad that you can't get through a single day seem common.

My Moto G will probably get the update soon, at this rate I am expecting to avoid installing it for a while.

[Agent]

Really mixed reports on various forums. A lot of the battery issues seem driver related, so we might be waiting on the ROM makers to port newer drivers.

I've not tried it on my N4 yet, I'm going to hold off a few weeks and let some of the popular ROMs mature. Although I'll probably end up on CM again.

Currently on CM 10.2. Stopped doing the entire upgrade-every-week thing a bit ago. I should just stick to milestones really

[MrRockliffe]

A few people have mentioned battery life now, which is interesting considering it was supposed to be a huge thing with the whole 'project Volta' thing. I really like the whole material design thing. KitKat and jelly bean has always felt like a half baked OS for me. Animations would often stutter and take more time than they needed to considering the power of phones these days. As soon as you increase the animation speed, for example in nova launcher, it adds noticeable lag to opening apps etc.

I'm looking forward to getting it on the Oneplus one!

[watercooled]

A lot of the changes seem subjective TBH, and I can understand the interface not being to everyone's taste as it does look jarringly different in some respects. For example I dislike the new keyboard as I mentioned. When I first installed it I was like 'urrghhh why did I rush to install this', but having had some time to adjust, I don't mind it, but it is a bit colourful and simplistic. Would I choose it were the JB interface still optional? Maybe not. I can't see anything so bad I'd be rushing out to replace my phone because of it though.

I'm not sure if the Nexus 4's version is typical though, as e.g. the app drawer still has a black background and a 5x5 grid of apps.

In terms of battery life, I've not exactly done any scientific measurements but it doesn't seem worse to me. However, I don't use many constantly-running apps (e.g. social networking) which are often linked to battery drain issues. Also, it seems you get battery life complaints with every new OS version; I had fairly severe issues with IIRC 4.2 (I think it was an update or two after the shipping version); the application processor wasn't entering deep sleep when locked, some wakelock was keeping a core active constantly. A reboot would reset this for a while, only for it to return a day or two later - I'd just get my phone out of my pocket and see the battery was drained by like 20%.

Something I have noticed is some input lag, which I don't recall seeing on KK. For example, pulling down the notification draw occasionally doesn't follow my finger, but opens after a noticeable pause. The same goes for opening the app drawer or cached apps which usually open immediately, again I'm met by a pause. Now I suspect, though I could be completely wrong, this might have something to do with the seemingly-infinite recent-apps menu which even a reboot doesn't clear. I've read reports of this causing issues which may be clouding my opinion but manually swiping off all of the cards and rebooting by phone seems to have restored performance for now. That recent apps thing always seems to open after a pause once there are a few cached apps though.

It's probably wise to hold off for the next patch to hopefully resolve some of the bugs. I intended to do that myself but curiosity got the better of me. I'm looking forward to 5.1 or whatever, hoping it will fix some of these issues.

PS: I don't know of anyone who likes that idea of integrating Chrome tabs into the app switcher though. A few reviews have stopped short of saying it's terrible, but saying they've not chosen to leave it like that themselves (e.g. Anandtech being the most recent I've read). Like some reviews, I did 'get' where the root idea comes from i.e. making web apps appear more like installed ones. But what I don't get is why it wasn't left as an idea on the whiteboard, and managed to make it into a widespread update as a default. It really is terrible and makes web browsing/tab switching brutally frustrating.

[herulach]

The battery issue being driver related makes sense - I had no problems on my N5 or N10. That being said it could just be a badly behaved app on the OnePlus One (whats the android equivalent of an apple fanboy again?)

I have to say I don't think its a backward step, its just a bit different. The keyboard is too iphone, but thats easily fixed and it can't be said enough how stupid the chrome tabs thing is, especially as the option is well buried. I'd been looking for it for about a week before watercooled mentioned it in this thread

[Smudger]

I updated my N4 to 5.0 and now it's unusable. The screen acts as if it's getting constant presses in some unidentified area. Not sure if this is a result of the update, or letting my 1 year-old have it for his nursery rhymes apps when I upgraded...

[watercooled]

So I've just noticed that same slowdown when opening/closing apps for example, and again it's cured by closing everything in the recent apps menu. It really is quite a significant difference too, so this is an epic fail for 5.0.

Had I not upgraded to 5.0 and knew this, I'd probably hold off until this is fixed. As it stands I'm not sure I can be bothered rolling back to 4.4 but I'd advise caution to others before upgrading because of annoying issues like this.

Edit: Oh and something else I've just noticed - when using WiFi with a captive portal, I keep getting notifications to sign in, over and over again. And it's not entirely obvious if WiFi is being used or if data is still going over the cellular connection; the icon seems to show up regardless and the little exclamation mark is near-useless as it doesn't seem to reliably clear even with a solid connection. Another fail, as I had none of these problems on 4.4 - I could just sign in in the morning and it would persist all day.

Rolling back is something I'm considering, but I might wait to see what 5.0.1 fixes as it should be arriving soon. And I can really do without doing a factory reset.

[DanceswithUnix]

So you can erase everything on the device while unlocking? I think I will wait for 5.0.1 at least!

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/...ory-reset-bug/

[watercooled]

I could be wrong but I don't think that's a default setting. It's still a stupid bug though.

[Smudger]

I did see a screenshot for 5.01 on Google+, not sure if it was a fake though...