I work for a telco (I don't speak for them, usual disclaimers apply).
Everyone gets really ranty when operators delay firmware updates. Yeah, some of them delay to force you to buy a new phone, or to stuff the ROM full of bloatware. Most, however, do extensive testing to make sure that customers don't ring up call centres making angry complaints.
Carriers (by and large) test the phone to make sure that the network portion operates correctly. They make sure that it complies with local regulations and that it's not going to interfere with the network. They also test that basic cellular functionality works. Many go further and check all standard operations of the handset.
It's been several years since I was responsible for device testing, but here's a list of problems that I remember from big name manufacturers (Nokia, HTC, Sagem) on their "final" firmware.
- 999/112/911 features not working.
- Reboots when receiving a text starting with a 0.
- Factory reset when receiving an MMS with more than one attachment.
- Inability to switch from 3G to 2G on handover.
- Caller ID always picking the first name from the SIM.
It was, frankly, an unending parade of shoddy workmanship. We'd file reports, wait for an updated firmware, test it again, see that it had more bugs, refuse to ship it.
Frankly, a few "enthusiasts" whining that they don't have a 0.1 firmware upgrade is a sensible price to pay compared to millions of customers storming your shops and demanding refunds.
Apologies to the sibling posts praising this for a different perspective, but this post goes way too far in the other direction. Yes testing updates is very important. But by "operators delay firmware updates" do you mean never release updates? By "some of them" "stuff the ROM full of bloatware" do you mean nearly all of them? Telcos also love to write and ship their own OS UIs which are themselves full of shoddy workmanship, then never release updates for many of the phones running them.
Listen, it is a shame the telcos get totally thrown under the bus when there's an entire supply chain full of issues, but I don't see what that has to do with this bug except in the sense that "there are bugs" not caused by the telcos.
It rather depends where you are in the world. UK operators are fairly good at releasing updates - but a lot depends on how many units the carrier sold.
In the EU there's a trend away from bloatware. But, again, depends on your country / market.
The real issue here is that GSM, MMS, etc are archaic and hard to code for. The industry's fight against VOIP seems to be the real issue here. Instead of all this complexity, why not just treat phones as data devices and voice is just another IP protocol that runs on them? I imagine the "shoddy workmanship" has a lot to do with carrier specific settings and vendor specific stuff that is difficult to code for properly. A modern telecom is a shitshow of legacy junk that should be thrown out.
Granted, this is kinda happening with some carriers and google voice, but the move to LTE-only with VOIP needs to happen sooner than later. The carriers seem to be fighting this because they, then, can't sell "minutes" and other old fashioned concepts. They would become a dumb internet pipe and they fear what that means from a profit perspective.
Instead of all this complexity, why not just treat phones as data devices and voice is just another IP protocol that runs on them?
They had a chance to do that with LTE. But the entrenched players decided instead to greatly increase the size of the specification (and the over-the-air protocol) to specially support voice (VoLTE).
Granted, handoffs from 2G to 3G to 4G are quite complicated, and then throw in roaming on top of that and it gets really complicated.
However, if I had a magic wand or time travel device, I'd rather have seen LTE be data only (with good quality of service support) and IPv6 only. That would have made the protocol vastly simpler, and then it would be possible to un-bundle voice altogether... eventually.
I don't know that such a design would be in the carrier's best interests though, so who's to say it could ever have happened, even with magic.
I'm not sure why you assume a switch to VoIP will help in that regard - in practical terms that means the SIP protocol for the voice (and SMS) signalling. While SIP is going to be the way forward, the specs are really full of ambiguity and not that well though out features. Most commercial vendors of SIP servers include full scripting languages in order for the admins to "normalize" the protocol in order to try to smooth over incompabilities - I can guarantee you that when phones are released in the wild with a SIP stack the telco hasn't tested, things will stop working until they've implemented workarounds for the SIP flavor of the day.
SIP is software. What runs on my cellular modem and its stack is firmware written by yet another party.
If SIP app #474 is screwing up, I switch to SIP app #475. This all can be done in userland as an application. Changing out my GSM stack? Yeah, I can't do that.
Well, with VoLTE currently being implemented in networks and phones, that SIP stack used to realize VoLTE on the phone can pretty much be considered firmware too.
However, you might fiddle around with various other SIP clients and find one that works for you. The other hundreds of millions of mobile phone users are not going to do that - so the problem will persist.
What are you basing your statement on? Verizon and AT&T phones have been pegged at different minor versions of iOS many times.
People want to believe Apple is some magic company that can do no wrong, but that ignores the extensive amount of QA (both in house and at the telcos) that happens before any release like this (as a longish time OS X user, I should know.)
When an iPhone update is released, the update becomes available worldwide for everyone. There is no delay waiting for individual carriers to approve the update, like there is with Android and Windows Phone.
That's because Apple owns the hardware. It's not really fair to compare the two shops in this way, considering the differences between an OS, and an OS + platform.
Nokia also owned the hardware but Symbian updates were carrier approved. Microsoft owns the hardware but Windows Phone updates are carrier approved. BlackBerry owns the hardware but Blackberry OS updates are carrier approved.
Not one single thing in your comment is factually correct. In fact, both points are demonstrably the opposite of the truth. Apple is not perfect. It is very good at marketing, very good at aesthetic design, decent to good at acquiring marginally above average hardware, and ranges poor to decent at software. The most important thing Apple is good at is marketing, and your comment demonstrates why.
Can you please provide the demonstrable truth that Apple gets carrier approval for their updates (which are released simultaneously worldwide, sometimes new updates go out mere days apart, which is definitely not enough time for every carrier in the world to have tested the update to approve it.
And also links the news articles where millions of Apple customers stormed shops after updates broke their phones.
> The most important thing Apple is good at is marketing, and your comment demonstrates why.
Apple has been able to become powerful in phone market. They enough power to push the carriers around, rather than the other way round. Therefore everyone but Apple has to have their updates approved by the carrier before they get pushed out. My comment was not pro-Apple. Merely pointing out the hypocrisy in how carriers claim they have to spend months testing updates for everyone except Apple.
I had accidentally moved $1,000 from the wrong bank account into Google Wallet, and called customer service to try and figure out what I should do, because there wasn't going to be $1,000 in the account I had selected, but Google Wallet was giving me access to the funds already.
The CS rep that responded was a nice guy, but had no clue what to do. We started spitballing together some possible ideas, and I suggested that we just let it go and Wallet will eventually figure out that the transfer didn't go through, and deduct the money back from my Wallet account. He thought that might be a good idea, but had no further ideas beyond that.
That was Google Wallet, and that was $1,000 floating around. I can't imagine the level of customer service available to anyone who hasn't actually put money directly into the equation.
Do they actually do that thing we all saw in The Internship, where they have random engineers field support calls? Because I felt like I was talking to a random engineer.
I used to work at Google in support. You were not talking to a random engineer - the support people are all dedicated support contractors. Most of the teams are all non-technical and the only thing they know about how the product works is from a two week training where most of the time is spent on learning how to avoid lawsuits.
How do people think google puts software engineers on the phone randomly? That's just an insane idea. I mean, these guys all make what 150k starting with 250k+ salaries not unheard of and you really expect their managers to go, "Oh btw, you're on helpdesk this week. Put on your headset and talk to clueless people for 8 hours today."
It was in The Internship, that's what put the idea in my head, and as far as I know it's in there because they do/did do that, with the idea being you get a better understanding of who you're writing features for if you get your questions from the horse's mouth occasionally.
I once worked at a startup-bought-by-bigco that did almost exactly this. Granted it was level 4, not level 1 support; and it was on a quarterly, not weekly, basis.
my experience in the past made me avoid newer Google products because support in the past was non existent. last thing i bought was a nexus one. i for the bad touch screen (registers ghost touches after screen is on for a while) and i could either complain on forums and be ignored or start a return with htc that from the forums histories ended with a device on worse condition and save touch screen bug sent back...
I can promise that this is the one thing they don't do, because then sometimes you'd get a useful answer. Yes, talking to the Image Search guy about Google Wallet would be useless, but he might have some clever guess. At the very least he would display an understanding of why computers do the things they do.
As is, it has to be essentially non-technical people taking the calls. I can't think of why else they would respond to a complaint like "The age on my account won't update as I get older" with "Are you sure you're right about your age?"
Wow, thanks for that interesting insight into the telco side of firmware upgrade delays.
I humbly submit that the carriers could avoid a lot of ill-will if there was more transparency in that process. I hope there aren't contractual obligations in place preventing that because it really changes the way I personally see the problem.
They have always been fairly transparent in how this happens. The problem is they say they have to put these things through an extensive testing process before release...and then never release it. But hey, here's a new phone you can buy with the latest release!
Go to any carrier support forum / Twitter and they're usually pretty open about testing. But, yes, there are always contractual obligations. Not least, Manufacturer X doesn't want Carrier Y saying "Delays are due to..."
Motorola and Google goes (dumbly, imho) completely opposite on this.
they sell devices that are unlocked/developer edition, that are full of disclaimers that if you unlock boot loader some guaranties do no apply etc. and instead of providing h the new images first to this users to help then test, they usually roll out to the general population and weeks (Motorola, months) later make the images officially available.
i guess there's two reasons, one is that they can get some money from operators to release first on one network or another, the second is that they have no consumer support so they couldn't care less. alternatively it's just honest incompetence.
On the other hand, by delaying an update containing important security fixes, you leave your customers sitting ducks for the next drive by download attack.
We haven't seen any major botnets infecting mobile phones yet, but I think it is just a matter of time. Desktop browsers gets updated almost instantly world wide and they still fall prey for attacks, when mobile software lags for weeks or months at a time. The more people do their online banking on their phones instead of their desktops, it gets more valuable as a target.
This problem needs a solution, and sooner rather than later.
I second that. We always get the same stream of negative comments towards telcos (not saying they're not deserved), but we don't get to see very often how this looks on the other side of the fence. It'll be wonderful to have more comments like GP's one.
I've seen this issue too on my Nexus 4. Rebooting fixes the problem, at least temporarily.
Since I had just used the OTA updates for stock 5.0 and 5.0.1, another redditor suggested that I do a factory wipe. I haven't seen the problem recur yet, but it has only been a couple days.
Because of this and other problems (random crashes), if I see any issue again, then I'll downgrade to 4.4.4. My typical uptime for that release was measured in months, and for 5.0.1 the uptime is measured in days. I've been severely disappointed with this release. I don't see how the new look and feel provides any significant usability benefit.
It may be a bad generalization since I imagine Google teams for different products don't have that much in common, but it seems to me that since some time Google is pushing more forward and caring less about apps being reliable and bug-free.
I've seen errors in inbox, in google music, and most annoying in google photos where I'm unable to access some of my albums (created stories were unavailable for me for about 2 weeks - I've checked almost every day, it's fixed now).
I tried taking Google take out (downloading all of my Google data), but all I got was an e-mail that it failed to create it. And there's of course not much I can do, I'm simply out of luck (well I can google similar problems to see I'm not the only one and that others are also out of luck).
I'm still a Google fan but I'm very dissappointed with this. Of course they can exist just fine if it works only for 99% of cases, but that's not the same brand that I knew.
Lollipop definitely feels like a beta release. As for features removed, it feels like this is Google's Windows 8.
I had to download QuickPic to do what Gallery used to do (no-nonsense viewing of media stored on my device, no I don't want your cloud). A lot of text is gone and I have to do a web search to figure out what the icons mean and what I'm supposed to touch to do what I'm trying to do. Using my Nexus now requires me to read the manual. My e-mail went unsynced for days before I figured out how to manually sync it again.
I bought a Nexus to avoid all the crapware, and now Google is churning out the crapware directly to my phone.
i had to use quickpic since nexus one, mostly because the stock gallery took some 3min to open when i had 1k images on the sd... sadly quick pic now has ton of "cloud" features. only a matter of time until i need an alternative
I have a Nexus 4 like you and I treat it like a Windows 98 PC : reboot early, reboot often (ie at least once a week since Lollipop, it was worse before).
The phone seems to have problem exiting airplane mode (I do it every night) and only a reboot cures the problems.
Been running 5.0.1 stock on a Nexus 4 for a week with no problems. Haven't got around to trying to build a 5.0.1 CM port yet but at least stock image I don't have to factory reset constantly anymore.
I had the same issue with an older 4.4.x version of Android, tried everything and after two weeks of frustration I just returned it and got a new one. Never saw the problem again.
I probably have a related issue on my android 5.0.1 nexus 7 table.
It's not a phone so I can't test that but I am having a hard time connecting to WiFi manually sometime (for example if I have 2 per-saved WiFi AP's in range and I want to switch from one to the other) and only a restart seems to fix it.
The annoying part is not that it won't switch but it disconnects and refuses to connect to anything until you restart the tablet.
This release of Android is certainly full of bugs.
And then people are screaming like spoilt children on the Moto G Reddit and Google+ pages that they are disappointed in Motorola for not providing Lollipop on all models worldwide yet.
It seems that in the end Nexus, etc. are the beta testers for us Moto users. (Though we still get updates faster and more frequently than most other Android phones.)
An indication that Google no longer considers the phone functionality of a smartphone to be all that important? Or is the Nexus 4 considered too old already? It is a little over 2 years old, which is a relatively long time in the mobile world.
I'm curious to know what the cause of this bug is.
And that causes a lot of consternation to users, obviously.
Priority should be divided into two fields in these systems: user-submitted priority, and dev team's priority. Look at all the people who feel directly insulted by the "Priority-Small" tag - they don't know what it means or if it indicates that Google hasn't triaged it (seriously, this old, and not triaged?) , they just feel minimized and condescended to.
>> An indication that Google no longer considers the phone functionality of a smartphone to be all that important?
I cringe whenever a product fails to perform perfectly at its primary function. Other stuff I'll let slide, but if it's any kind of "phone" it better make calls flawlessly.
This issue also affects users of CyanogenMod 11 which is currently based on Android 4.4.4 (https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-5728). The same thing happened to the HTC One M7, but HTC fixed it quickly with an OTA update (http://venomroms.com/venomhub-fix-no-sound-calls-htc-one-m7). All in all it looks like the malfunction is caused by an automatic update of the Google Play Services framework. Not reacting at all so far is definitively not a good move of Google.
if it's a bug in a closed source Google service, how HTC released a fix? even if they roll back the service on a new system image it will self update... unless they hacked away and bumped the version...
The services probably just trigger an error deeper in the call stack like in Qualcomm's proprietary binary blobs. Perhaps they received a new version from Qualcomm.
I am looking at getting the Nexus 6 and its threads like this that make me think twice about leaving the iPhone. I prefer android, I love my nexus 7 but issues like this are the reason I left android to get the iPhone 5 from a Droid X2. Now, I thought if getting a Nexus google would support it more because my main issue with the Droid was that it was never updated...but now I am concerned.
The good news at least, is that the Nexus 6 seems unaffected by whatever this is (and may in fact be at the core of this). Nexus 6 shipped with 5.0.1 and I'm not aware of any Nexus 6 owners seeing this problem (when running stock 5.0.1). It's mostly the pre-5.0 android phones that are having this problem when upgraded to 5.0.1, so my guess would be that it either doesn't happen with a stock (from scratch, not upgrade) install of 5.0.1, or else it's some difference between the hardware/firmware in Nexus 6, and every other Android phone.
Long time Android user here! (G2, Nexus One, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4).
After several years of hoping Android would get its shit together, I switched to a 5S and got my wife an iPhone 6.
I have minor quibbles: No Google Calendar App. Google service push notifications seem a tad slower on the iPhone. But the experience is just so much better.
I am by no means a fan boi. I am a fan (as an infrastructure engineer with real problems to solve) of my phone just working, without factory resets, reboots, etc. The iPhone, to my chagrin, does exactly that.
Android is great but God help you if something breaks. Both of my Nexus phones stopped functioning after a year, and I know through very painful experience that after that point product support all but disappears. Presumably all of Google's good engineers move on to the next generation of products as soon as the last generation ships. In any case the pattern is pretty clear. If support is important to you, this is not a company you do business with.
Given the complexity of the devices, I suspect any modern phone will come with a number of issues. For iPhones it is almost traditional that one serious issue will be found shortly after launch (like antennagate a ka "you are holding it wrong"). Curiously, the majority of users seems to get by just fine, so maybe some issues are not as big as they seem.
While both their claims and yours are anecdotes, I'm more willing to side with more people with similar anecdotes than a single one who then uses their single experience to try and invalid the multitude of other experiences expressed.
I don't think they're trying to "invalidate" anything, just state that it's not something everyone is seeing. I have 5.0.1 on a Nexus 4 and it's working fine. I also don't doubt in the slightest that something is screwed up and a lot of people are encountering a serious bug.
No, he was trying to invalidate, or could have chosen his words better. By saying his one experience makes the telephony bug reported by so many users to be "not aa common thing", he has (purposefully or carelessly) stated that his experience outweighs the multitudes who knew enough to go to that site to report the bug, and the folks at XDA who found a fix that works for many.
nexus 5 with 5.0.1 and me and my father definitely have had this problem. I switched to an iPhone because I had an upgrade and genuinely thought the phone wasn't working anymore.
In what way is your bluetooth audio broken? If you're seeing frequent disconnects, switching from 5 GHz to 2.4 GHz WiFi seems to have resolved it on my Nexus 7. Which is utterly ridiculous, but hell, it works.
5.0 degraded the ability for google maps navigation voice prompts to work while other apps are playing bluetooth audio. It creates a lot of silence and cuts off parts of the audio.
There has been 2 threads about Apple decreasing software quality, I found theses reports to be totally bogus. If there has been a piece of technology that is falling in quality it is Android, Lollipop is the worst update ever :
I've had this happen to me a couple times, seems like when I'm doing something on my phone and answer a call, the sound from the app on my phone plays over that call, annoying. Then when I end the call, I no longer get voice on calls until I reboot.
So, basically, don't answer then phone when in an app until an update cures it.
Just about what I expect as far as phones these days, people just suck at making software.
Because with Android's update process you cannot opt to push anything but the latest update which is always an unproven by its nature.
It isn't like Windows where you can opt out of the latest service pack for a while and wait to see if it is stable. With Android you either take the latest update or you don't.
You can install updates via downloading the updating and flashing. This isn't too difficult (basically what you have to do if you run a ROM). It's often how people opt-in to updates that are rolling OTA before their device wins the OTA lottery.
Android Lollipop also broke the led indicator at the bottom of my Nexus 5. I can no longer count on it to reliably indicate if I have messages/emails pending on silent mode.
That's intentional. Lollipop no longer has silent mode; instead it has "no interruptions" mode, which considers the LED indicator an interruption. I suspect there are third-party apps that can do a pseudo-silent mode that may work for you.
A comment in the recent "Apple has lost the functional high ground" thread started as follows, "Thing is nobody complains about Android updates breaking everything [...]".
I thought that was hilarious, since at this point my baseline expectation for an Android update is for absolutely core functionality to be broken, and not be fixed for a few months if ever. Now, technically only 3 out of 6 Android devices I've ever owned ended up in that state. But it appears that it would have been just a matter of time for the Nexus 4, and it doesn't appear in those stats just due to being stolen before it was broken.
I have to restart my Nexus 4 more than once a day. Either I don't hear the other party or they hear pure static. And here I thought I was buying a quality device.
Everyone gets really ranty when operators delay firmware updates. Yeah, some of them delay to force you to buy a new phone, or to stuff the ROM full of bloatware. Most, however, do extensive testing to make sure that customers don't ring up call centres making angry complaints.
Carriers (by and large) test the phone to make sure that the network portion operates correctly. They make sure that it complies with local regulations and that it's not going to interfere with the network. They also test that basic cellular functionality works. Many go further and check all standard operations of the handset.
It's been several years since I was responsible for device testing, but here's a list of problems that I remember from big name manufacturers (Nokia, HTC, Sagem) on their "final" firmware.
- 999/112/911 features not working.
- Reboots when receiving a text starting with a 0.
- Factory reset when receiving an MMS with more than one attachment.
- Inability to switch from 3G to 2G on handover.
- Caller ID always picking the first name from the SIM.
It was, frankly, an unending parade of shoddy workmanship. We'd file reports, wait for an updated firmware, test it again, see that it had more bugs, refuse to ship it.
Frankly, a few "enthusiasts" whining that they don't have a 0.1 firmware upgrade is a sensible price to pay compared to millions of customers storming your shops and demanding refunds.
Google has an atrocious attitude to customer service - it's part of their business model https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-c...