Has anyone had experience with Android Lollipop on their tablets?

Three weeks ago Lollipop was installed on my Google Nexus 7 (Asus-made), and my tablet has had to be regularly rebooted. Chrome browser is especially buggy, and the user interface itself has crashed several times.

A chap in the university bookstore computer department suggested I should wipe the tablet clean, and do a complete reinstall of everything. Fortunately I have a content/app save feature for when and if I ever need to reinstall the operating system.

I appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

Daly

I had the same problem, but did finally find the answer here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/11351514/I-updated-my-tablet-but-now-its-running-slowly.html

The relevant bits:

Step one is clear the tablet’s cache memory of old and potentially troublesome files, which is worth doing on any Android device following a system upgrade. With the tablet turned off, press and hold the volume down and power buttons.

When the Start arrow appears use the volume down to scroll to Recovery Mode and press the power button to select.

When the Android icon appears hold down power and press volume up; release power and use volume down to select ‘Erase or Wipe Cache Partition’ and the tablet should restart.

If it is still sluggish [mine was] go to Settings > About Tablet and tap Build Number 7 times to enable the hidden Developer Options menu.

Go back to Settings, Tap Developer Options then Window Animation Scale and set it to Off.
Repeat for Transition Animation Scale and Animator Duration Scale.

Finally tap Background Process Limit, set it to 3 Processes, switch off, restart and it should be a lot livelier.

Thanks for this, Jaslar! I read the article. The process sounds complicated to me, so I will look at the article some more before trying it.

Do you have any thoughts on just wiping the tablet clean, and doing a complete reinstall of Lollipop, apps, and data?

I appreciate the article because it confirms there is a problem with Lollipop and Nexus 7 - something which Google apparently has neither the customer commitment or integrity to do.

Daly

jaslar wrote:

I had the same problem, but did finally find the answer here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/advice/11351514/I-updated-my-tablet-but-now-its-running-slowly.html

The relevant bits:

Step one is clear the tablet’s cache memory of old and potentially
troublesome files, which is worth doing on any Android device following
a system upgrade. With the tablet turned off, press and hold the volume
down and power buttons.

When the Start arrow appears use the volume down to scroll to Recovery
Mode and press the power button to select.

When the Android icon appears hold down power and press volume up;
release power and use volume down to select ‘Erase or Wipe Cache
Partition’ and the tablet should restart.

If it is still sluggish [mine was] go to Settings > About Tablet and tap
Build Number 7 times to enable the hidden Developer Options menu.

Go back to Settings, Tap Developer Options then Window Animation Scale
and set it to Off.
Repeat for Transition Animation Scale and Animator Duration Scale.

Finally tap Background Process Limit, set it to 3 Processes, switch off,
restart and it should be a lot livelier.

OT: how in the world do people ever discover fix-it recipes like this -- me, I'd just toss the machine ;-)

jaslar wrote:

The relevant bits:

Believe me, Paul, if I had the money I would toss the Nexus 7.

The sound jack on it failed some months ago, so I can't use it to listen to music.

So much for Asus' reputed superior quality.

And talking about Asus, the sound jack on my previous laptop, an Asus, failed at 16 months. I got a usb workaround which actually provided a better quality of sound.

I am unlikely in future to buy anything with the Asus label on it. Or the Nexus label.

All of this is frustrating on a limited budget.

Daly

Paul Korm wrote:

OT: how in the world do people ever discover fix-it recipes like this --
me, I'd just toss the machine ;-)

jaslar wrote:
>The relevant bits:

Well, it did take maybe 15 minutes of fiddling around to make sense of all that. But by the end, my tablet (which I use a lot, and like a lot) was once again pretty peppy. I have to believe that this is relatively simpler than a total reset and rebuilding of the environment. (But I am indeed looking at backing everything up.)

Mostly, I use the Nexus 7 as an ebook reader, email checker, Simplenote note-taker, and browser. It fits very well in my hand - much better than an iPad.

Generally, I don't really create a lot of content here, although that was my original intent. I do capture notes, though. Somehow, thumb typing and Swype don't quite add up to the notebook I'd hoped for. But the Nexus 7 is a wonderfully portable device for all of that. And this is the first update that was troublesome.

Favorite apps (of interest for this forum): SimpleNote, Grapevine, Outline, SimpleMind. A notetaker, two outliners, a mind mapper. Used in about that order. On the whole, the Nexus has been a solid piece of hardware for me, both cheaper and more reliable than a lot of Android tablet alternatives. This was the first upgrade that really caused problems.

Update: although the tweaks I posted did help some, I finally bit the bullet and did a factory reset. (First I went through and made sure I had copies of any local files I wanted to keep. It took just 10 minutes to watch the system do the erasures and reboot. Then it took me about an hour to add back and configure all my apps.)

Was it worth it? Yes. I don't know as Lollipop is really all that much better. But the reset and rebuild cleaned a lot of cruft out of my tablet, too, and now it seems back to its pre-upgrade stability and speed.

Some people reported happily taking this route: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_tilapia It's a more purely open source OS version of Android. But that was just a little more trouble than I wanted to take.

Jaslar, after many days of my tweeting in the wilderness I got a helpful response from @GoogleNexus, who suggested doing a save and reinstall. Luckily my tablet has been set to back up automatically to Google Drive, so just a couple of simple steps to launch the reinstall.

I'm glad to say that overall the tablet is working much closer to normal except, ironically, for Google Chrome, which continues to slow down to a crawl, of just stop for a while and, all too often, eventually crash. Sometimes it takes the user interface or processing system down with it. I have had to reboot twice since the reinstall - and that's a sign that there's still a problem.

After further tweeting to @GoogleNexus I was directed to a help page which lead to process for getting real time voice support. I haven't had a chance to do that yet, but will do so tomorrow or next day.

I also plan to raise the issue that the failed sound output jacket, the second ASUS product on which that has occurred, has made my tablet significantly less useful than it was intended to be by both Google and myself.

Daly


jaslar wrote:

Update: although the tweaks I posted did help some, I finally bit the
bullet and did a factory reset. (First I went through and made sure I
had copies of any local files I wanted to keep. It took just 10 minutes
to watch the system do the erasures and reboot. Then it took me about an
hour to add back and configure all my apps.)

Was it worth it? Yes. I don't know as Lollipop is really all that much
better. But the reset and rebuild cleaned a lot of cruft out of my
tablet, too, and now it seems back to its pre-upgrade stability and
speed.

Some people reported happily taking this route:
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_tilapia It's a more purely
open source OS version of Android. But that was just a little more
trouble than I wanted to take.

Glad to hear you got through it. You know, I also have some oddities with sound with my 2012 Nexus 7 - can't always get solid two-speaker sound from my ear buds. But beyond that, it's been a solid performer as a piece of kit.

I think it's probable that Asus has some issues with its sound output jacks - in both laptops and Google Nexus. Perhaps that's why, to the best of my knowledge, Asus hasn't been used to manufacture the larger Nexus tablets.

I also wonder how many of the Google Nexus 7's were like my first one, and just died completely.

Asus has a good reputation, especially for such things as its mother boards, which I am told the company makes itself. But the bloom has gone off the Asus rose for me.

I'm glad your Nexus 7 is working well, and I am hopeful that I can get mine working that way also.

Cheers,

Daly