Two things I found that help tremendously with Lollipop

[IronCat21]

I'm not a phone expert, but I do have way too much time on my hands, so I've been going through alot of the guides to help with 5.x problems. The first helped the most, and that was editing some developer options. I changed my windows animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale to 0.5x. It's feels faster than its ever been, even when I took it out of the box. My phones multi tasking is crazy fast, along with pages loading. Give it a try, and if anyone could give me the negatives of it, I'd like to hear it too!

The second was in networks settings. This might just be a Verizon thing, but I saw some Droid Turbo users changing their network settings from Global to LTE/CDMA. Verizon doesn't pick up any other type of tower, yet it still searches for it which wastes battery. Signal got slightly better, and I'm betting my battery will be battery too.

If a tech can weigh in, that'd be great.. thanks!

Edit: I think it was someone here,maybe ironass, who said the animation reduction was just a band aid til everything gets fixed. But hey, I can actually use my phone while it's charging, and it DOES NOT over heat!!!

 

[ironass]

Cheers IronCat21! This is a workaround for the extremely laggy Verizon firmware version of Lollipop.

For step-by-step instructions and video on how to speed up animations, see #1.8 of S5 Lollipop Update Problems - Dummies Guide

 

[IronCat21]

Cheers IronCat21! This is a workaround for the extremely laggy Verizon firmware version of Lollipop.

For step-by-step instructions and video on how to speed up animations, see #1.8 of S5 Lollipop Update Problems - Dummies Guide

That's where I saw it!!! Thank you. I figured with all the negativity and complaints with not alot of solutions other than wipe cache partition, full reset, and sit on your thumbs for an update, hopefully those two things might help.

 

[ironass]

That's where I saw it!!! Thank you. I figured with all the negativity and complaints with not alot of solutions other than wipe cache partition, full reset, and sit on your thumbs for an update, hopefully those two things might help.

The lag situation is about to get a lot worse for Verizon's old version of Lollipop it would seem, with the latest update from them. See, here.

 

[IronCat21]

Right, I saw that. It really doesn't make sense why they wouldn't put more effort into fixing a phone that was a flagship device, unless you believe the conspiracy that Verizon wants you to upgrade your "old" phone for a spiffy new S6 or G4. Or, they're just slow.

 

[ironass]

Right, I saw that. It really doesn't make sense why they wouldn't put more effort into fixing a phone that was a flagship device, unless you believe the conspiracy that Verizon wants you to upgrade your "old" phone for a spiffy new S6 or G4. Or, they're just slow.

As per #1.6 of 40 Galaxy S5 models - Dummies Guide... MONEY!

 

[IronCat21]

Do you know the reason why it's just Verizon and ATT that are like that, and not carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint?

 

[ironass]

Do you know the reason why it's just Verizon and ATT that are like that, and not carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint?

Yes. Being by far, the 2 largest carriers in the USA they can call the shots with phone manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, LG, etc: This is the price manufacturers pay doing business with them.

The phones from these 2 are very heavily subsidised by them and in turn they will demand the cheapest deal from a phone manufacturer by whatever means. For instance... AT&T sold the Samsung Galaxy S4, (SGH-i337), without Corning's Gorilla Glass and then charged customers extra if they wanted it! Other potential areas to save money are warranty and phone support.

Then, to recoup some of that subsidy and generate more income as well as creating their own carrier eco systems, they set about modifying the stock Samsung firmware and stock features by, in some cases, removing them and replacing them with their own versions and then add as much revenue generating bloatware as they can. To ensure that their customers do not refuse any future bloatware updates, they remove the standard option of doing so and force these updates to their customers phones. Then to prevent customers rooting their phones and switching to custom AOSP ROMs, they lock down the bootloaders, tighter than a pair of nun's knickers. Essentially, it can be argued that they have now produced a clone version of Samsung's original TouchWiz firmware since it is now running a non stock firmware and is not issued or updated by Samsung.

This whole procedure takes around 2 months for each release and costs a lot of time and money to the carriers who then issue these firmwares themselves and not via Samsung as all other models are.

So, whilst my more expensive stock, non carrier branded, Samsung firmware, generic phone has received 5 Lollipop updates in less than 5 months that have improved the phone greatly and added features and enhancements that Verizon and AT&T users can only dream of, as well as having an unlocked bootloader and a 2 year Samsung warranty.... I am afraid that there are those at the other end of the spectrum who paid less for their phones and are not receiving the same sort of support.

There are those in the worldwide community who are fed up with the all the complaints, particularly from Verizon customers this time round, who think that...
1. It is Android's fault
2. It is Samsung's fault
3. That their Lollipop version is the same as everyone else's
... and they argue that... "You got a cheap phone... stop bellyaching... you got what you paid for!"

Another question you may like to ask yourself is, "Why are there not any stock Samsung, non carrier branded, phones, readily and easily available in North America?" Heck... Communist China, Russia, the Baltic States and the majority of the countries that the S5 is sold in have them.

Answer... "Who would buy a heavily branded and modified Verizon or AT&T phone if they could have an unbranded, generic Samsung phone that worked on any carriers network and came without the bloatware and had regular updates from Samsung, directly!"

To paraphrase George Orwell's book, "Animal Farm"...

"All Samsung Galaxy S5's are equal, but some Samsung Galaxy S5's are more equal than others"

For more information on the Galaxy S5 models, see... 40 Galaxy S5 models - Dummies Guide which starts with the sentence...

"Think that everyone's Samsung Galaxy S5 is the same as yours...
Think again!"

 

[IronCat21]

Thanks! I understand why I got this phone for a dollar off amazon now. It's a great phone, just bloated.

 

[ironass]

Thanks! I understand why I got this phone for a dollar off amazon now. It's a great phone, just bloated.

A brand new, at launch, S5 in the UK to buy outright = £550 / US$852

or, on contract for 2 years with unlimited minutes and texts and 4GB of data = around £45 / US$70 per month with, "free", phone.

You get what you pay for!