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Renegade334 · 2015-06-05, 13:00

Severe apologies for this instance of thread necromancy, but I suppose I might as well put a friendly warning to other fellow Note 4 (and Android handset) owners out there.

I've decided today to roll back to KitKat 4.4.4 using Odin 3.10.6 after more than a month of Lollipop. I've enjoyed Lollipop's responsiveness and UI dynamism but I've been otherwise seriously aggrieved by the unexpectedly HIGHER battery drain the new OS version seems to cause. Some helpful souls out there have suggested wiping the cache partition to help the OS clear its junk and concentrate on the most recent and essential files, but that counsel was only a short-lived illusion of a fix; my daily battery consumption has practically doubled, even though my phone is configured practically exactly as my KitKat was (the upgrade spared my user files/profile, so I didn't have to redo everything from the ground up), even with power saving and background data restriction enabled. It was just too annoying.

It seems that Lollipop, in the end, was a botched OS on several counts; Google claims to have fixed problems in its 5.1 version (reportedly slated for the N4 somewhere around end of July), but I'm afraid that only concerns the memory leak issue, it doesn't remedy the higher power consumption, apparently caused (at least in part) by an extremely hungry Google Play Services and Google Now. The promises of lower battery consumption (made possible through ART) just didn't bear out and today I had my fill. Google now once again claims that its Android M (the future Android 6.0) will bring even better battery life by cutting down on background services when the screen is automatically turned off, but I now know better than to prematurely rejoice. We know what eventually happened with the boy who cried wolf.

So I used ODIN (be mighty careful with this, you COULD brick your phone if you go about like a headless chicken) to return to KitKat and...entered a bootscreen loop. I withdrew the battery, flashed the phone back to Lollipop (again, using the official ROM for my phone version and country code) and was surprised to see the reboot completing without a hitch. So I reflashed back to 4.4.4 and finally realized, to my great pain, that the downgrade required a FACTORY RESET (yes, data reset, not just cache wipe) that would wipe out my user profile and settings, thus preventing me from enjoying my phone from the get-go.

So now I'm busy refurbishing its settings and app lineup.

My advice: be extremely careful when your phone offers a Lollipop upgrade. There are pros and cons, and unfortunately for Note 4, there are big downsides with this upgrade...enough to convince me that KitKat was the way to go.

2015-06-05, 13:00	Link #7
Renegade334 Sleepy Lurker Graphic Designer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Nun'yabiznehz Age: 38	Severe apologies for this instance of thread necromancy, but I suppose I might as well put a friendly warning to other fellow Note 4 (and Android handset) owners out there. I've decided today to roll back to KitKat 4.4.4 using Odin 3.10.6 after more than a month of Lollipop. I've enjoyed Lollipop's responsiveness and UI dynamism but I've been otherwise seriously aggrieved by the unexpectedly HIGHER battery drain the new OS version seems to cause. Some helpful souls out there have suggested wiping the cache partition to help the OS clear its junk and concentrate on the most recent and essential files, but that counsel was only a short-lived illusion of a fix; my daily battery consumption has practically doubled, even though my phone is configured practically exactly as my KitKat was (the upgrade spared my user files/profile, so I didn't have to redo everything from the ground up), even with power saving and background data restriction enabled. It was just too annoying. It seems that Lollipop, in the end, was a botched OS on several counts; Google claims to have fixed problems in its 5.1 version (reportedly slated for the N4 somewhere around end of July), but I'm afraid that only concerns the memory leak issue, it doesn't remedy the higher power consumption, apparently caused (at least in part) by an extremely hungry Google Play Services and Google Now. The promises of lower battery consumption (made possible through ART) just didn't bear out and today I had my fill. Google now once again claims that its Android M (the future Android 6.0) will bring even better battery life by cutting down on background services when the screen is automatically turned off, but I now know better than to prematurely rejoice. We know what eventually happened with the boy who cried wolf. So I used ODIN (be mighty careful with this, you COULD brick your phone if you go about like a headless chicken) to return to KitKat and...entered a bootscreen loop. I withdrew the battery, flashed the phone back to Lollipop (again, using the official ROM for my phone version and country code) and was surprised to see the reboot completing without a hitch. So I reflashed back to 4.4.4 and finally realized, to my great pain, that the downgrade required a FACTORY RESET (yes, data reset, not just cache wipe) that would wipe out my user profile and settings, thus preventing me from enjoying my phone from the get-go. So now I'm busy refurbishing its settings and app lineup. My advice: be extremely careful when your phone offers a Lollipop upgrade. There are pros and cons, and unfortunately for Note 4, there are big downsides with this upgrade...enough to convince me that KitKat was the way to go. __________________ << -- Click to enter my (dead) GFX thread.