Updated tonight and did nothing to prepare for it.
The update downloaded and installed without a hitch. No hard reset required.
No crashes so far and no app freezes as far as I can tell.
As far as speed increase, it is hard to tell the difference. The phone was already fast and fluid before the update. If there is any increase, it appears to be incremental, at least to me.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Android Central Forums
Just to try, I checked for updates on Thursday to see if the update was released in my area. I was surprised when I saw the downloading progress bar right afterwards. Since I wasn't on Wifi, I thought that downloading this update over the LTE network would eat up a large chunk of my data plan, so I tried to stop it from downloading by turning off the data connection and turning it back on again. But it just resumed downloading as soon as I turned data back on. So I turned data back off and rebooted the phone. When the phone turned back on I turned data on again, and the update STILL resumed downloading.
By now I just decided to let it run its course and update. It took about 15 minutes to complete.
If these update downloads are interrupted like I did here, are there any chances that the file will get corrupted? Two days after the update, I see no problems on my phone; everything works as well as it had been before the update. Even better, the 178 MB download didn't even register under my data usage records on myAT&T.
EDIT: I don't know if this is really a problem, but after a browsing session of about 40 minutes, which caused my battery to go from 97% to 89% (I use Chrome), I took a look at the battery stats (Settings>Battery) and noticed that the screen was on the top of the list. I know that's what's supposed to happen, but then under "Screen" was "Android System". Before the update, Chrome would have been right under the screen usage. I thought the battery stats were wacked, so I tested it out with another app to see if it would show up in the stats. After using the app for a few minutes, I rechecked the battery stats and the app did show up. Any other app I used showed up as well. But even after using Chrome for the next several minutes, it still failed to show up under the battery stats. Why did this happen? Is anyone else using Chrome having the same problem?