should I upgrade to Lollipop from 4.4.4?

[zkyevolved]

I have had to do a wiping of the cache and reset once (which wasn't necessary), but the cache yes. In the first build of Lollipop I saw a bug with User Daemon (I believe it was called?) and I disabled that (which was a GPS locator for the Samsung widget clock with weather). After that, my battery life was exactly the same as with KitKat.

I like lollipop. So no problems here! I think lollipop fixed more issues than broke them. For me the biggest issue was GPS tagging in pictures (a function I need). The only thing I had watch out for was the GPS being called on by that User Daemon (again, I'm not sure if that was the name, it was located in Location in the settings).

 

[Mom2Ninjas]

Have you asked Samsung about sending it in for them to reflash and telling them the issue you are having? I think they even pay the shipping fees and it is free to do.

They can remove software and put it back on, which is much better than a reflash and many times, that fixes bugs.

No. I didn't have time for all of that. Need my phone for work. So I bought a note 4 at full pop and shut off its ability to even look for updates.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

No. I didn't have time for all of that. Need my phone for work. So I bought a note 4 at full pop and shut off its ability to even look for updates.

Do you still have the S5?

 

[Mom2Ninjas]

Do you still have the S5?

No. I sold it to one of those eco machines.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

No. I sold it to one of those eco machines.

Ahh.. Ok. I was going to tell you that sending it in then you could sell it for good money after being fixed. I just sold mine last weekend for $300.

I have to ask now.. What machines? I am not familiar with those.

 

[Mom2Ninjas]

Ahh.. Ok. I was going to tell you that sending it in then you could sell it for good money after being fixed. I just sold mine last weekend for $300.

I have to ask now.. What machines? I am not familiar with those.

http://www.ecoatm.com

Sold it for $150, but didn't want the hassle of trying to fix it enough to sell it to a person and then listing it... so $150 was good.

 

[Kelly Kearns]

Interesting.. We have some of those machines here and I didn't know it.

 

[Mom2Ninjas]

Interesting.. We have some of those machines here and I didn't know it.

Gives you cash money on the spot. Makes it easy to unload old electronics.

 

[EMT J]

I have seen MANY try to do so and can't get this done. I have also seen certain variants be able to rollback but several that can't yet.

According to the threads I've read here and XDA (both have very detailed instructions about how to do it) the only issues that impeded the process was having Samsung Kies installed on your computer (for whatever reason Odin doesn't work well with Kies installed which is odd because they're both Samsung programs) and trying to flash custom firmware to a non rooted device (doing so trips Knox and causes complications). My phone isn't rooted. I flashed official KitKat firmware downloaded from Sammobile.com The only problem I had which was very minor, was that the phone got stuck in a boot loop after it was done. That was easily solved by pulling the battery, booting into recovery and doing a factory reset which was painless because there was nothing on the device after the flashing.

I would assume that all Note 4 devices would be able to be rolled backward or forward for that matter via Odin being that its a Samsung tool for Samsung devices whose purpose is to flash firmawre. But you may be right about some carrier specific versions not having that functionality. Thankfully the Sprint version isn't 1 of them

I really wanted to like lollipop but with some of the aesthetic changes and the hit to my battery life I just couldn't get into it.

 

[Gunny94]

So far all my friends with Lollipop don't have any issues. They had some issues with the battery life but factory reset fixed those I say go for it if you like the new design.. Apparently that's what most people hate about Android L

 

[Racinghart91]

don't upgrade ! Lollipop is not an improvement of kitkat.

 

[anon(5719825)]

So far all my friends with Lollipop don't have any issues. They had some issues with the battery life but factory reset fixed those I say go for it if you like the new design.. Apparently that's what most people hate about Android L

I have a Note 4 still on Lollipop with some amazing battery life. I would not give that up for anything. It took several days to "settle in" I guess as far as the battery life goes. I was having a problem with the stock Samsung keyboard freezing up with one app that I use but since switching that to Swype, it's been working great.

I have a Note Edge that I went back to KitKat on ONLY because of the S Health app. I tried for a week to not upgrade the app from the KitKat version and the first time I turned on WiFi, it upgraded and I couldn't stop it. This is my daily take with me phone and I use it with my Gear S watch so I like the old version of the app much better, enough to go back to KitKat to keep using it. If I didn't like this app so much, I would have no problem staying on KitKat.

 

[Andrew Blackburn]

Your battery stats look like mine. .. completely destroyed my battery since lollipop 5.0.1 update. .. EE UK
Not a very happy bunny here. Few minutes screen on time you can see the percentage dropping. ..factory reset cache partition wiped... no difference. .. set up as new phone again still same. .

 

[Mom2Ninjas]

I think the bottom line is that lollipop is like a bag of lollipops. You don't know what flavor you are gonna pull out of the bag. Some like the flavor they get, some don't. I know I didn't.

I'll stick with kitkat right now. I prefer chocolate anyway. Lol

 

[Kelly Kearns]

My battery life has been amazing with Lollipop. I get no wakelocks, when my phone goes to sleep, it sleeps. I take the charge off before I go to bed and I don't charge it until 24 hours (give or take an hour or two) later.

 

[andy2141]

Just for the record you can definitely downgrade to KitKat on a 910F UK unbranded model. In fact I've done it twice.

You just need the correct firmware from SamMobile, a copy of ODIN and about ten minutes of your time.

I will say the first time I did it I nearly had a heart attack as it got stuck on the Samsung boot logo. This is a known issue and you simply have to go into recovery and do a factory reset for it to boot up normally.

 

[juliesdroidsync]

Lovin' lollipop here... do the factory reset afterwards.

 

[Douglas Yarnold]

When I upgraded my Samsung Galaxy S5 to Lollypop, it really screwed up my phone, overheated and drained my battery fast. Last week I upgraded to the Samsung Note 4 that came with OS 4.4.4.
I was hesitant to download Lollypop onto the Note 4, but every time I connected to WiFi, it would prompt me to upgrade the OS. So reluctantly I allowed to OS upgrade to Lollypop. So far, after a week, all is well, no overheating, great battery time. So no complaints. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[Gunny94]

I have a Note 4 still on Lollipop with some amazing battery life. I would not give that up for anything. It took several days to "settle in" I guess as far as the battery life goes. I was having a problem with the stock Samsung keyboard freezing up with one app that I use but since switching that to Swype, it's been working great.

I have a Note Edge that I went back to KitKat on ONLY because of the S Health app. I tried for a week to not upgrade the app from the KitKat version and the first time I turned on WiFi, it upgraded and I couldn't stop it. This is my daily take with me phone and I use it with my Gear S watch so I like the old version of the app much better, enough to go back to KitKat to keep using it. If I didn't like this app so much, I would have no problem staying on KitKat.

Yeah, I had that issue but as soon as I unistalled and installed again fixed the issue.

 

[Duncan Annetts]

Reason to update :-
1) Some new features.

Reasons not to update :-
1) Some features removed.
2) I'm not willing to play Russian Roulette with my Note 4.
3) I don't like the new material design UI that comes with Lollipop.
- White replacing black is a terrible idea for your eyes and your battery life.
- Soooooo much whitespace (without the option to reduce it) around information is annoying.
- The removal of borders for clickable ('pressable'?) buttons and text entry areas makes navigation and page usage less clear and therefore slower.
- The multi-app screen becomes littered with screens making it hard to find the background app you're trying to return to.
4) Fewer and fewer settings are made available with each Google app update. Are Google getting lazy? If I wanted a dumbed down phone I'd get an iPhone.

Complaints about the update to Calendar (about 6 months ago) forced Google to re-introduced a lot of the features it took out and to reduce the whitespace padding around text that it had forced on everyone. You'd think they'd realise that this will be annoying all the same people in other apps and in the Lollipop UI in general. I guess I'll skip Lollipop completely, but the daily update requests on the phone are getting annoying. Why can't I switch the reminders off for a week? It feels like Google are turning into Microsoft and Lollipop is their Vista and Windows 8 rolled into one.