Jan 9 2019 forced update horrible, help

[Android Central Question]

Yesterday my galaxy halo force updated. I chose this phone because of how I could do certain settings, the manner of the icons, where accessibility features were, the way the keyboard worked, the sensitivity of the phone, battery life, and features in texting & phone. Now ALL IS GONE.

I have a progressive, degenerative disorder, plus cancer. I HAVE TO HAVE a phone that is usable in certain ways, this one did and NO LONGER DOES. The designers who made this "update" have failed, in every way possible to make my phone "updated". They have regressed it into a piece of crap. Si fix this, find a way to fix it, or buy me a phone that does actually work because THEY have DESTROYED mine.

-The icons are smaller, NO way to make them any other size other than literally an inch, so now you have a spot, not an icon that will allow you to access the app

-speaking of that, it has changed the way my phone registers touch. I could touch letters or icons or places within an app and it work, but now it's hit or miss. So they completely destroyed the calibration to touch sensitivity & location

-the battery now burns through. Wtf? What process is being hidden that was added?

- has changed the icons (rounded squared ones, squared round ones, can't match the previous image- no way to change any of those back

-keyboard and the autocorrect have changed. There are weird symbols that show up, words that were entered in are now gone

- when I get or make a call the screen with phone options has changed-those icons are in different places, with no way to move them back, completely ruining my accessibility to them since I have to use 1 hand most if the time

-have taken away the ability for the user to do specific sounds for each person's text notifications. THIS ONE WAS A REQUIREMENT FOR ME. It HAS to be on my phone.

-the manner in which apps run is ruined. They have been constantly crashing since this forced faildate

-if I turn off wifi, it now turns back on without any warning. I can not even list how many processes & important things have been ruined or lost because of this.

-while typing this got to notice more aggravation. When I try to touch onto a specific spot or move the cursor, I am unable to. That sensitivity is gone. It won't work it will appear, where you didn't touch, but near it, but now impossible to grab it & move it to where needed. The options when you try to cut, paste, copy are messed up.

-my kid's school called while doing this & I couldn't even find where to be able to access the keyboard during the call in time to receive the message from them because it was GONE.

Seriously, what crack were (just typed were & it was changed to 'we' on me ?! tried to correct a word, the cursor showed up middle of word, started erasing from the end instead of letter it was on) these people on? Nothing is "better" nothing is "updated".

Let's just say that this has made every moment using (my now piece if crap) phone incredibly horrible & I HAVE to find a way to get my phone back before it ruins more.

 

[Rukbat]

Si fix this, find a way to fix it, or buy me a phone that does actually work

To begin with, this isn't Samsung, we don't develop updates, we don't fix them and we don'[t replace phones. This is a forum of users helping other users.

-The icons are smaller, NO way to make them any other size other than literally an inch, so now you have a spot, not an icon that will allow you to access the app

Using Nova Launcher, you can make the icons larger. Also some icon sets (available for free in Play) use larger icons.

-speaking of that, it has changed the way my phone registers touch. I could touch letters or icons or places within an app and it work, but now it's hit or miss. So they completely destroyed the calibration to touch sensitivity & location

Since that's mainly a hardware matter, I doubt that. It's probably a perception issue.

-the battery now burns through. Wtf? What process is being hidden that was added?

Probably the "process" of a new version of Android setting itself up. That could take as ong as a week.

- has changed the icons (rounded squared ones, squared round ones, can't match the previous image- no way to change any of those back

Again, Nova or a different icon set.

- when I get or make a call the screen with phone options has changed-those icons are in different places, with no way to move them back, completely ruining my accessibility to them since I have to use 1 hand most if the time

For some they're better, for some they're worse - you just have to get used to changes. (And that's not an age-related thing either - I'm 76 and already quite comfortable with Pie.)

-have taken away the ability for the user to do specific sounds for each person's text notifications. THIS ONE WAS A REQUIREMENT FOR ME. It HAS to be on my phone.

That was taken away with Oreo. You can get the function back by installing SMS Popup and setting up tones for each contact.

-the manner in which apps run is ruined. They have been constantly crashing since this forced faildate

Go to recovery and clear the cache. (Only the cache, not the data.)

-while typing this got to notice more aggravation. When I try to touch onto a specific spot or move the cursor, I am unable to. That sensitivity is gone. It won't work it will appear, where you didn't touch, but near it, but now impossible to grab it & move it to where needed. The options when you try to cut, paste, copy are messed up.

Maybe you need a stylus? (Dollar stores sell them for a buck or two.)

-my kid's school called while doing this & I couldn't even find where to be able to access the keyboard during the call in time to receive the message from them because it was GONE.

Why do you have the screen locking while at home?

Let's just say that this has made every moment using (my now piece if crap) phone incredibly horrible & I HAVE to find a way to get my phone back before it ruins more.

About the only way you're going to do that is to flash the older ROM, root the phone and disable updating.

 

[andyt22]

I wholeheartedly agree with your comments about Android Pie vs Oreo - I accidentally "upgraded" my Samsung S8 from Oreo to Pie last Saturday night and it was horrible, After spending most of Sunday trying to get the phone to behave like it used to, I gave up & decided to flash the phone back to the last update of Oroe/Android 8.0.0 released in December 2018, using Odin and the image files I downloaded from Sam Mobile.

It took several attempts and I spent most of Monday on this but at least it's back the way it was although half of the app settings haven't been restored for some reason (I used Samsung's SmartSwitch and a PC to back the phone up) first so I'll have to spend another few hours reconfiguring all the apps.

Does anyone know how to turn off/disable the upgrade notifications I'm still getting asking me to upgrade to Android Pie? Theyr'e annoying and the only thing I can do at the moment is press the 'later' button. i don't ever want to move to Pie (unless Samsung make sensible changes to it).