Samsung Galaxy S4 Lollipop upgrade nightmare

[thaimite]

This is the story of my Samsung Galaxy S4 uograde to Lollipop which kept me busy all day yesterdaf. Thankfully all now seems to be fixed.

No advice needed just a tale of woe which may bring a smile to your face as you think about your trouble free updates.

I woke up yesterday to find my phone would not write to my SD card so none of my Podcasts/ Feedly data lf other nightly downloads had taken place overnight. I could copy from the SD card OK, so I copied everything to my PC, reformatted the card and that solved that problem The apps were all able to updatye OK. Before copying all my stuff back to the SD card, I decided to check if Lollipop would now install. I had tried several weeks ago when the 'upgrade' first became available,but it had said that I did not have enough free space on the phone. I had almost 2GB free on my phone memory and another 2GB on the SD card. but Lollipop insisted I needed more than 1GB!!!! Obviously in Samsung / Google land maths 2GB is not more than 1GB. Anyhow by REMOVING the SD card the download would now proceed. This was the start of the real nightmare. I should have stayed with Kick Cat. At least it worked and I was happy with it.

Anyway, I started the download and upgrade. The download took more than 2 hours, and then the upgrade started and so did my problems.

After the ;upgrade; I found my phone would not start properly. As soon as Lollipop was running, it would wait about 30 seconds and then reboot. This cycle just repeated and repeated. Obviously 30 seconds is not long enough to do much in the way of diagnostics but after about an hour of trying to stop the constant reboots including booting in to safe mode and clearing the cache neither of which helped, more by luck and desperation to try anything I finally I discovered that if I could manage to turn off the Wi-Fi, during the phone's 30 seconds of life, the phone would do one final reboot and then stay on.
However even after rebooting my router and even trying the phone in an area which I knew had no Wi-Fi signal I could not get the phone to stay on with the Wi-Fi activated which also meant I could not go in to the Wi-Fi settings to disable the existing log-ins.

At this stage I decided the only thing to do was to do a factory reset and then restore my data. SUCCESS or so I thought for a full 5 minutes. The factory reset worked and I was able to log in to my Google account using the Wi-fi BUT as soon as it started to restore my data the phone went back in to the reboot cycle. It should be noted that I have good 3G coverage here and using that did not cause the phone to crash.

The next thing I decided to do was another factory reset but this time not to let Google restore my files and settings. This was an act of last resort and I do not know what I would have done if this had failed, other than downloading and restoring trusty old Kick-Cat Fortunately this time and so far the phone is working.

I have now restored and reconfigured most of the apps I use regularly, and the phoneseems to be working OK
.
However it is a LONG and slow process. I have found that the Google spy network seems to have more bugs than bytes.
When I log I to the play store on my PC and go to view my apps, it shows many apps I have not had installed for years, nut worse many other apps many other apps (especially paid ones) are not even listed, so instead of quickly going through Google's spy history to restore the apps I want I am having to try to remember not only what app I had but then search search the play store for my favourites and then install them from there.

Anyway, tofinish on a positive note, I now have nearly all my apps restored and reconfigured and all seems wek with the phoe. I have not tried to get to grips with the new features of Lollipop yet so it is too soon to say if it is really an imrpovement. I hope that any f you who have yet to upgrade their phones have a trouble free experience. In fairness I have had many samsung phones and done numerous upgrades for myself and others and this is the first time I have had any problems.

[faraday]

Loved that part: "Success, or so I thought etc"

I've got an S5 & haven't had any problems with Lolipop - yet. But then I've yet to see any improvements with it, & already Android are chuntering on about the "M" upgrade!

I really think that these developers sit around looking for 'fixes' & 'improvements' that aren't required. Keeps them in a job though.

Get sooo tired of all the flipping 'bloatware' - guess the only way is to root it....but I'd only mess the phone up.

[Dario]

I didn't succeed either with my upgrade, a pain in the but, so I let Samsung do it. After they ugraded, all my apps were gone. They didn't say one word. I only saw it after I returned home. I had too many anyway.

[dddave]

I envy the OP in that he is a knowledgeable enough user to know what workarounds are available to try. Most of us just sit there, chin on hand saying "<deleted>??".

I hope you will at some point soon post your impressions of Lollipop vs. KitKat. I'm still undecided what I will do when the Lolipop upgrade to my Zenphone-5 finally (if ever) becomes available. So far, I see no advantages considering my own usage, I only see perils.

[thaimite]

Thanks for the comments/ Imust admit I was lucky ln solving the issue but if a factory reset did not work then I would have been stumped.

After a few days of using Lollipop, i must admit I do not find many changes that actually improved anything. It seems the so called update is a change for changes sake, which I could really do without.

I find the new GUI if anything harder on my failing eyesight. I am finding a better battery life but I beliebve that is probably because of all the crap that was removed by doing a total wipe and now I've only installed the programmes that i actually use on a regular basis.

One very simple program I had before was a flashlight. I canot find the same one I had before which was an icon on the home screen that6 directly turned the light on and off. Of the many I have tried all seem to take me to another GUI and then offer options I neither need nor want plus loads of adverts. If anybody can suggest a good SIMPLE flash light program I will be very grateful.

I have looked on my Google Playstore and can't seem to find the one I had before

[Pib]

It's like most upgrades...more hype than real and noticeable improvements.

Lollipop installed without issue on my the S4s the wife and I own and bought here in Thailand from DTAC. The wife is not crazy about it...still preferred Kit Kat ever after a few weeks of using Lollipop. For me, it seems more like a menu rearrangement and theme updates more than anything else although I'm sure there are improvement in the coding...it's just I"m not noticing the improvements...or what Lollipop considers an improvement I'm just considering a change--not to imply the changes are for better or worst.

The Normal (default) font size with Lollipop is smaller than Kit Kat and for the wife she set it to Large vs Normal to where she's OK with the font size. I'm OK with the Normal (default) font size, but agree with her the Normal (default) font size on Kit Kat sure appeared larger whether it really was or not.

We both did have one problem afterwards where the phone ring volume would drop to a low level...completely intermittent as to when it would do it...some times after a few hours...sometimes after a few days. Hard to hear a ringing phone in your purse or pants pocket when the ring volume has been lowered to the low end and will not automatically increase in volume like it's suppose to. Never had this problem when the S4s were running Jelly Bean or Kit Kat.

Did some googling and as it turns out this problem was affecting a lot of other folks also. The fix is to select Settings, My Device, Call. and then "uncheck" the setting named "Increase volume in pocket." When this setting is checked it's suppose to increase ring volume when in your pocket/bag, but apparently there is a Lollipop bug with this setting and it will actually cause the Ring volume to be set at a low level even through you have set it to the highest level and the ring volume "will not" increase when in pocket/bag as its suppose to.

[thaimite]

It's like most upgrades...more hype than real and noticeable improvements.

Lollipop installed without issue on my the S4s the wife and I own and bought here in Thailand from DTAC. The wife is not crazy about it...still preferred Kit Kat ever after a few weeks of using Lollipop. For me, it seems more like a menu rearrangement and theme updates more than anything else although I'm sure there are improvement in the coding...it's just I"m not noticing the improvements...or what Lollipop considers an improvement I'm just considering a change--not to imply the changes are for better or worst.

The Normal (default) font size with Lollipop is smaller than Kit Kat and for the wife she set it to Large vs Normal to where she's OK with the font size. I'm OK with the Normal (default) font size, but agree with her the Normal (default) font size on Kit Kat sure appeared larger whether it really was or not.

We both did have one problem afterwards where the phone ring volume would drop to a low level...completely intermittent as to when it would do it...some times after a few hours...sometimes after a few days. Hard to hear a ringing phone in your purse or pants pocket when the ring volume has been lowered to the low end and will not automatically increase in volume like it's suppose to. Never had this problem when the S4s were running Jelly Bean or Kit Kat.

Did some googling and as it turns out this problem was affecting a lot of other folks also. The fix is to select Settings, My Device, Call. and then "uncheck" the setting named "Increase volume in pocket." When this setting is checked it's suppose to increase ring volume when in your pocket/bag, but apparently there is a Lollipop bug with this setting and it will actually cause the Ring volume to be set at a low level even through you have set it to the highest level and the ring volume "will not" increase when in pocket/bag as its suppose to.

Thakns for the tip on the volume. I have not noticed it yet, but I get very few regular phone calls. Most of my calls are with Viber or Line.

I agree with your comments about cosmetic changes, its almost as if Google are trying to make a 'fashion' statement so anybody running an old version is quickly identified as a non-tech savvy user!!! I dread the day my wife's A5 gets an update, as it is has taken a long time to get her used to Kick Cat.