Major problems with BLU Life One Android 5 Lollipop update

[TangoSmiles]

I had posted yesterday my initial experience with installing this over my Android 4.4.4 installation. You can see that article at forums.androidcentral.com/blu-android-phones/616797-blu-life-one-android-5-lollipop-now-available-first-experiences-installation.html

However, I've now done a hard wipe reset of the phone, which I've confirmed doesn't help, and identified the problem as a serious memory management issue. It seemed to be worth posting as a new article with a clearer title, so here it is:

There are major memory problems on the BLU Life One upgrade to Android 5.0.2 Lollipop BLU_X010Q_V09_L_GENERIC from Android 4.4.4 Kit Kat BLU_X010Q_V16_GENERIC or BLU_X010Q_V17_GENERIC. The following are the main symptoms:

SYMPTOMS
-----------------
1. All Apps will always download to Internal Memory, even when Preferred install location is set to be Removable SD Card. These include all Apps that previously were just fine on SD cards. Sounds innocuous enough (just move it later, right? nope--read on!), but it's symptomatic of a much bigger problem.

2. If an App is totally removed (deleted) from the phone, the space it occupied is NOT freed up in Internal memory. This is verified by Settings > Storage (Apps and Free space entries under Internal memory). Not even rebooting the phone clears this.

3. If you move an App from Internal memory to the SD card (say, because of Problem (1) above), it will usually (but not always--see Problem 4 below) move fine. HOWEVER, similar to Problem (2) above, the space it used to occupy is NEVER freed up. Same symptoms as in Problem (2) above. (The App was indeed moved since the available memory on the SD card goes down by the correct amount corresponding to the size of the App.)

4. Sometimes, Apps that you try to move to the SD card fail halfway through the move inexplicably (these are Apps that ARE designed for use on SD cards, and worked just fine on Android 4.4.4 from the SD card), with the cryptic message "Couldn't move App" and no further explanation. The App stays in Internal memory and continues to work from there. However, the space that it took up on the SD card in attempting the move is never recovered! For example, if I try to move a 100 MB app and the copy fails 80% of the way through, 80MB of the space on the SD card is lost (as shown in Settings > Storage for available space on SD card). And if I try to move it 10 times, it will fail 10 times, using up an ADDITIONAL 80MB of space on the SD card EACH TIME (800 MB total, in this example). So you have a similar "permanent memory leak" issue on the SD card as well, similar to that on Internal memory with Problems (1) through (3) above!

IMPLICATIONS
--------------------
So you have two huge problems here:

1. You might as well not have an SD card for additional Apps. You can only EVER download a maximum of about 4 GB of Apps (what's left from 8 GB of internal memory after the OS and Cache files, etc.). There's no point moving it to the SD card, because even if the move works, the "freed" up space is never made available for further use.

2. It's actually even worse, since even deleting an App will not free up space to make room for another App. So it's only he first 4 GB of Apps that you EVER download that you will have room for! And I don't know yet how App updates will further eat into this. Your only option to recover space after deleting an App is to do a Hard Factory reset to wipe out all Apps and user Data and start afresh to download a different set of Apps, but always witht he 4 GB total limit, regardless of any SD card you have.

RECOMMENDATIONS
-----------------------------
1. If you have a BLU Life One phone, do NOT accept the upgrade to Android Lollipop (5.0.2)!! Android 4.4.4 works just fine without any of these memory problems. Wait until BLU has fixed this. This cannot be a problem in the Android base code, since it's too obvious a problem to have been undetected, so it's clearly in BLU's port for at least this model (and possibly others, so I wouldn't do so for other model BLU phones either).

2. If you already did the upgrade, you have one of two options available to you.

a. Confirm that you indeed have this problem and then call BLU Technical support. They will replace the phone under warranty without hassling you about it. Of course, you will be without your phone for several days at least. They claim that the replacement phone would have the old OS on it, but it wouldn't hurt to reconfirm this! Since, as of this writing, all Life One phones are less than 1 year old, they should all be under warranty.

b. If you only use a few and stable set of Apps, you can use the phone in this semi-crippled mode anyway more or less normally. You should avoid updating your Apps unless absolutely necessary, so that more and more of your memory doesn't disappear from updates. At some point, BLU will release an update (would be at least weeks, I'd guess, since it doesn't sound like a simple fix, even once they acknowledge it and start working on it, which to this date they haven't). You can still use the SD card to hold videos, music, etc., so it's not like the SD card is useless--it's just useless for Apps.

No, you CANNOT downgrade back to the previous version of Android. BLU technical support explicitly stated that they have no system in place to provide a flashable image of the previous version to the user (to load over ADB or via the SD card), even though technically that should be possible. Only their own technicians can do that.

I still like my BLU phone (well, under Android 4.4.4 anyway), but it appears that their port of Android 5 was done sloppily and with insufficient testing. And since the update was supposed to be available in July 2015, but was delayed till November 2015, they clearly had unanticipated problems, but unfortunately succumbed to the pressure to get it out anyway.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central, and thanks for that very helpful info!

 

[Robert Whitley]

I started the update yesterday, but have never gotten anything about the second part.. Perhaps Blu has pulled the upgrade until they fix it..

 

[TangoSmiles]

I started the update yesterday, but have never gotten anything about the second part.. Perhaps Blu has pulled the upgrade until they fix it..

I hope they have pulled it for their own sake and that of their customers. I did file a support request with BLU both via their online ticket system and by phone the same day or the day before I posted it here with a summarized version of the key symptoms (it was rather difficult in the latter case to convince the phone agent that I was trying to provide helpful information that she really should be noting down; she seemed puzzled that her offering to replace my phone didn't seem to satisfy me!).

As far as your not receiving the 2nd part--that's strange that BLU wouldn't have pulled the entire upgrade rather than just Part 2 of 2. In my case, the prompt to download Part 2 was pretty much instantaneous as soon as the phone rebooted as part of the installation of Part 1. Also do note the Android version and Custom build version (in Settings > About device) that correspond to the FOUR software versions I've seen so far, so you can confirm that you have in fact upgraded to V18 (and not V17 which came out not so long ago but was still Android 4.4.4). I'll summarize them below.

Custom build version/Android version:

1. BLU_X010Q_V16_GENERIC/4.4.4: The version my phone came with when I bought it pretty much as soon as it came out (July 2015), so I assume the first version ever shipped.

2. BLU_X010Q_V17_GENERIC/4.4.4: An update that presumably fixed some unspecified problems that came out about September 2015. I originally thought it was the Android 5.0 update and wasn't ready to install it yet, so I kept declining when it offered to install it for me (upon each reboot). Finally I did in November 2015, and discovered that it was still Android 4.4.4 and my phone behaved exactly the same before and after as far as I could tell.

3. BLU_X010Q_V18_GENERIC/4.4.4: This is the one where the upgrade notice explicitly states that this is the update to Android Lollipop (5.0) and it is Part 1 of 2 of the upgrade. I am not 100% sure of the full custom build version name is exactly as I indicate, but upon completion of Part 1 of the upgrade, you do see this numbering (I am sure that it did have V18 in the name and it was still 4.4.4).

4. BLU_X010Q_V09_L_GENERIC/5.0.2: This is what my phone currently shows upon completion of Part 2 of 2 of the Lollipop upgrade. I can also add for this version that the Kernel version is 3.10.49 (date 2015-11-16) and Build number is LRX22G (I didn't note these for the previous).

Regarding their Custom build version numbering scheme, it appears to be as follows:
- BLU is of course BLU
- X010Q is the code for the phone hardware (BLU Life One). Note that there are apparently TWO hardware versions of BLU Life One: X010Q and L120X (and no, this is not dependent on whether it's the XL model or not). I know this because when you enter your model number (Life One) on their support form, you are further prompted to enter a Part Number with exactly these two choices in the dropdown. I would guess that the L120X is probably the new 16 GB/2GB RAM version of the phone, but this is just speculation.
- Vxx or Vyy_L (where xx=16,17,18) are the three KitKat 4.4.4 versions than seem to have been released for this phone, with 18 possibly being only the "installer version" intended only to load Lollipop. For Lollipop, it's Vyy_L, where yy starts from 09 (Android 5.0.2) for this model and is the one with the problems I've describe above.
- GENERIC is a fixed string of apparently zero informational value

 

[TangoSmiles]

Got a reply from BLU today to each of my points. Here is the summary:

1. Problem with default installation location to SD card being ignored and always installing in internal memory.

Their reply, "This is a known behavior expected for Qualcomm devices on Lollipop ... as seen with the latest 2015 Motorola and LG devices [as well]."

My take: It may well be an architectural limitation of more Lollipop restrictions with apparently some hardware interaction--I cannot evaluate that claim but I have no reason to doubt it, even though a quick Google search didn't come up with any "known behaviour" type articles. Nonetheless, even if there's nothing that can be done about it, it's a real problem for 2 reasons: (a) It makes auto-update of Apps pretty-much useless if you have a lot of Apps on the SD card since after update, they will reappear on Internal memory at EVERY update, and you'll have to do garbage collecting every so often to keep your Internal memory from becoming full and getting "Out of memory" errors. (b) The process of installing to Internal memory and then moving to the SD card is NOT lossless! To give an example I just tried out, I just installed the MS Word Android App (97 MB, all App, no Data). When I checked memory before and after the install, the free Internal memory went down 0.10 GB as I would have expected. Then I move to the SD card and the free Internal memory goes back up by only 0.03 GB! I reboot but still no change. So this Internal memory leak problem is a real nuisance and pretty much eliminates any benefit of being able to have Apps run off the SD card.

2. App deleted from Internal memory or moved to SD card does not recover the space it was occupying (alluded to in Item 1 above).

Their reply: "We are unable to reproduce this miscalculation. Please provide a video showing us the issue you are experiencing." They also pointed out that, "Please Keep in mind that with Android Lollipop you will begin to see the Insufficient storage error starting at 400-500MB rather that KitKat’s 200MB limit."

My take: I did more experiments and it is indeed more subtle than I had originally reported (but still problematic). Recall that I had done a hard reset (wipe) on my phone after the software update and even reformatted my SD card, so these were not artifacts of the update. But indeed, when I tried again now and deleted a few Apps, I found that all the space DID come back (unlike in my original report). But I also know I hadn't imagined it when I first wrote about it. Moving Apps is clearer, however. Some Apps upon moving to the SD card will free up "within rounding error" (0.01 GB) the amount of the original space they took; others as in the Word example above, only 30%! I guess it's not as reproducible as I had seen earlier (I could have sworn that NONE of the space was being recovered with either a delete or a move), but it's not too hard to reproduce significant leakage as in the Word example above. It seems there are more complex interactions at play here. (And Lollipop's increased demand for free space doesn't help.)

3. Even Apps that ARE permitted to be moved to the SD card sometimes fail inexplicably during the move.

Their reply: "So far, this is only seen with Amazon apps since they are system installed apps and not installed through the Play Store by the user. If you would like you can uninstall the Amazon apps, reinstall them, and see if they can successfully move to the SD card. If the issue you are experiencing is not with Amazon apps then we need to know what app/s are unable to move to the SD card."

My take: Not true. It happened with any number of other Apps. I didn't make a list the first time, but I did reproduce it with Skype (repeatedly). I am not sure that it is necessarily a function of the App, though. It may well be a question of system state (it is not lack of memory for sure since there was tons on the SD card). BLU support does seem to want to know about this, though--they are not trying to deny the issue. [As an aside, indeed the Amazon Apps are the only two pre-installed Apps that CAN be deleted completely, but they were not the culprit here.]

But I'm seeing another related problem: On Lollipop, far more non-pre-installed Apps have the "Move to SD Card" option disabled than did on Kit Kat! E.g., Google Sheets and Google Docs and a large number of others than I just KNOW I had moved to the SD card under Kit Kat and they worked just fine there but now most have that option disabled on Lollipop. So yet more pressure on the limited and leaky Internal memory ... it really seems to be a mess on Lollipop ...

My current view:
- The phone is a good phone and BLU's support was good and their responses credible (all the more so for the phones being budget phones, at least in price).
- However, if I were to buy the phone today I would definitely (a) buy the 16 GB internal memory version with 2 GB RAM and not plan on having any Apps on the SD card (though quite frankly under Kit Kat I had no problems with that) and (b) definitely NOT update (I cannot in good conscience use the word "upgrade") to Lollipop! There are some minor bells and whistles in Lollipop (most of which you can get through 3rd-party Apps), but the problems that come with it are horrendous and absolutely not worth it.
- My hunch is that all this is an Android issue and not a BLU issue. A lot of this memory management stuff has got to be so deep in the internals of the OS that I can't imagine any reasonable vendor wanting to meddle around with it.

My current plan? Struggle along with Lollipop until I am back in the US (am on an extended international trip) and can do the exchange in an efficient way (from a shipping and speed standpoint) to take them up on their offer to replace my phone with one that has Android 4.4.4 again. Once the warranty expires (or heck, perhaps before that--it was only $99 and I got it mostly to learn Android, coming from iOS!!) I will root the phone and play around with custom ROMs and the like, knowing I can go back to any version I like!

Will I go back to iOS? My, that is a personal question isn't it?! Would I even be permitted to admit it here if I were?

But the answer is: "Nah, this is way more fun!"

 

[Robert Whitley]

I may have pressed download later when the prompt for the second part came up.. I am not received any futher prompts and it has been two days since I did the first pat.. I checked and I do have custom build 3 as ref in your message..

 

[Robert Whitley]

I got the notice for the second part of the upgrade this evening.. I have not done it yet.. There are some folks on the Blu facebook page that have upgraded and not reported any issues, of course they may just not be aware they have an issue..

 

[Robert Whitley]

I also found something that said lollipop does not allow aps to be installed to the sd card..

 

[TangoSmiles]

From BLU's response, it doesn't seem that they yet see it as enough of a problem to pull the update.

Don't know which FB page or group you're referring to--I don't see reports of successful upgrades on either BLU Products Development Team group nor the official BLU Products Page. Can you point me to the group you're referring to with the specific FB URL? (I do see a lot of people clamoring for the Lollipop update, who don't seem to realize they are better off without it.)

As far as being able to install Apps on the SD card, as far as I can see, most posts on the subject seem to indicate that it can't be done on Kit Kat but can on Lollipop, and my experience with the BLU Life One was the opposite. Under KitKat 4.4.4 I had about 100 Apps, almost all of which were on the SD card other than the factory-installed ones and those that used widgets. Now on Lollipop 5.0.2, only an insignificantly small percentage of Apps show as being movable to the SD card, so I can have fewer than 1/2 the Apps I had originally on my phone.

 

[dabu11et]

I tried the update and I am stuck in recovery mode. I can not get out of it, even after factory reset. What can I do to fix this? Thanks.

 

[TangoSmiles]

I removed the Word App that I had moved to the SD card (but still took up 70% of the original space in Internal memory) and sure enough the Internal memory space came back. Combining this with other articles I've been reading on the Internet, I'd conclude the following (Kit Kat=Android 4.4.4, Lollipop=Android 5.0.2):

1. On Lollipop, moving an App to the SD card only seems to move a portion of the App (given that there was no Data in the ~100MB space that this App occupied I'm not sure how the division works, but that's how it seems to).

2. On Lollipop, many many Apps can no longer even be moved to the SD card (partially or otherwise), that could on Kit Kat.

3. BLU Life One seemed to have a particularly liberal version of Kit Kat as far as moving Apps to SD was concerned, since many articles refer to other phones on Kit Kat not being able to move Apps to the SD card at all (without some sort of hack, which hack no longer works with Lollipop, basically "pm set-install-location 2" over the ADB interface WITHOUT rooting--see the excellent article at techgage.com/article/moving_your_non-movable_android_apps_to_an_sd_card/

4. Lollipop seems to have increased restrictions on SD Card use by Apps (big brother being paternalistic again and protecting us from ourselves) and this may be related.

5. You may need to have the SD card installed in the phone BEFORE you turn it on for the first time (if not, you will have to do a factory reset with the SD card installed) to use the ability to move Apps to the SD card (whatever little that ability may be).

6. Bottom line: Stick with Kit Kat on BLU Life One if you have lots of Apps that will use up the 4 GB you have left on your Internal memory (note that many Apps, once they are opened for the first time, create huge amounts of Data that often cannot be anywhere other than Internal memory).

7. On Lollipop, essentially the SD card is only good for data storage for certain Apps that allow it, although by default they will usually store data in Internal memory. On many versions of Kit Kat, that also seems to be true, although the version that came on the BLU Life One seemed much more liberal in this regard.

8. To save Internal memory space, make sure that for Apps like mapping apps or Video or Photo apps, that you go into their settings before downloading any maps, video files, etc. (files that are especially large), find the option that controls where data files are stored, and change that to the SD card. Note that if you see the option for External Storage 0 or 1 (or External Storage 1 or 2) that you select the HIGHER numbered one. The lower-numbered one is often "emulated SD storage" that is actually really internal storage!

9. For Lollipop, the only way to use the SD card for storing a large number of Apps seems to be to (a) root it (b) get a program like Link2SD (c) create a 2nd partition on your SD card using the EXT file system (d) link this 2nd partition using Link2SD so that Lollipop will allow its use for Apps. There are many articles on the internet on how this is done, but I haven't it this myself and besides it's outside the scope of this thread.

I'll add to this thread if I learn anything more that's pertinent, but I think I've reached a level of understanding on what's going on (even though I don't like it). I've learned far more about Android than I was planning or expecting to in the last few days, so maybe that made it worth the hassle of being left with a downgraded phone after a supposed "upgrade."

 

[Robert Whitley]

I went ahead and installed the update.. I don't have a lot of apps, so I don't think it will be an issue for me.. I had to reset some things and there are some things I am not too fond of like no toggle for data on/off, but overall I think it is ok.. I did not have any issues with the update.. BLU has announced the update on their facebook page, so there will be many people trying it..

 

[senturain]

I did the update last night. So far everything seems to be OK except battery charging (more on that later).

After the update I also got the error message "Not enough space to update Google Service". At that time Storage showed about 400MB free space. The update download was about 900MB, and I found it under the app "System Update" (or something like that). After doing a Clear Data for that app I got enough space to update Google Service and a few other apps.

I didn't quite encounter the problems TangoSmiles reported, but now that he mentioned it, it did seem weird that after clearing the update download, Storage only showed about 1GB free space rather than 1.3GB (i.e. 400MB+900MB).

And a couple of more things about storage:
1. I only use a handful apps on the phone and all of them are in the internal memory. That's probably why I didn't encounter any problem related to moving apps to/from SD.
2. As TangoSmiles reported, some apps can store data on SD, but the storage calculation under Storage will count them. For example, although the internal memory is only 8GB, the Apps category alone on my phone is 8.3GB, plus 3.13GB for OS and so on. However, it does not appear to affect the calculation of the Available space, e.g. it still shows that I have 1.08GB available in the internal memory.

I use Nova Launcher so the UI looks more or less the same before and after the update. So far all the apps that I used frequently seem to work fine. After the update the system self-rebooted a couple of times, and each time showing "Optimizing apps ...". After that the system is smooth and responsive. I haven't had time to play around but I like what I've seen so far about Lollipop.

The main problem I have after the update is battery charging. I've been using an Anker charging hub to charge the phone and it used to charge it even faster than the original phone charger. However, after the update I charged it for almost 10 hours and the battery level only went from 27% to 48%. I'll try the original charger today (if I can still find it). Hopefully this problem will go away as TangoSmiles said.

 

[rchang24]

I had the same issue updating Google Services. Here's what you can try: Delete some big apps, update Google Services and then reinstall the apps you deleted.

Not sure if it's a glitch or maybe updating Google Services uses a lot of space, but I was able to reinstall all of the apps I deleted.

As for charging, try a heavier gauge cable. Something rates for 2 amps or higher. When I had charging issues with the BLU Life One, it turned out to be a bad cable (or at least under rated). It might not have anything to do with Lollipop.

 

[richdugg]

So is there any positive to doing the upgrade? I did Part 1 about 2 weeks ago and just got the Part 2 download today. I'm not going to install it if there are no good reasons to do so.

 

[senturain]

The charging problem seems to have gone away, either because battery re-calibration was completed as TangoSmiles said or because I used the original charger. I'll try charging it with the Anker today and see what happens.

The major features of Lollipop like Material design, revamped notification system, and ART runtime don't affect how I use the phone much, so personally I didn't see much difference so far, but YMMV.

One thing worth mentioning is that the new camera app now has a lot more options. I hope it can take better pictures as the old camera app was not very good despite the 13M camera. The downside is that the old app can save pictures and recorded videos to SD card but the new one doesn't. Because the internal memory is so small, it's going to be annoying to have to move the files manually to SD.

 

[senturain]

One more problem: ES File Explorer can no longer write to SD card. I use ES often to transfer files over network so this is a big problem for me. The workaround is to first transfer the files to internal memory then use the system File Manager to move them to SD card. Another annoyance.

 

[rchang24]

So is there any positive to doing the upgrade? I did Part 1 about 2 weeks ago and just got the Part 2 download today. I'm not going to install it if there are no good reasons to do so.

Seem to have more free memory.

 

[rchang24]

The charging problem seems to have gone away, either because battery re-calibration was completed as TangoSmiles said or because I used the original charger. I'll try charging it with the Anker today and see what happens.

The major features of Lollipop like Material design, revamped notification system, and ART runtime don't affect how I use the phone much, so personally I didn't see much difference so far, but YMMV.

One thing worth mentioning is that the new camera app now has a lot more options. I hope it can take better pictures as the old camera app was not very good despite the 13M camera. The downside is that the old app can save pictures and recorded videos to SD card but the new one doesn't. Because the internal memory is so small, it's going to be annoying to have to move the files manually to SD.

There is no reason to stick with the stock camera app if you don't like it --- either on KitKat or Lollipop. Plenty of options in the Play Store.

Some of them can store photos on the extetnal SD card on Lollipop. I paid the $2 for Snap Camera HDR for this feature.

 

[ellesmeer]

AT&T LTE was lost after upgrade to Lolipop from KitKat 4.4.4. I only got 3G,no matter how I manually changed carrier's connection and APN settings. I have downgraded to KitKat , then, AT&T LTE comes back.

Is this isolated issue, or everyone lost LTE? I guess it is a problem with modem in Lolipop. Any fix for this? I like more Lolipop indeed.