4.4.2 verdict ? yay or nay?

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CorruptedSanity

Senior Member
Oct 7, 2007
1,104
66
41
Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates
What's the verdict gentlemen?

Should I upgrade?

I am currently on stock nonrooted 4.3.

Battery life is amazing while sync is on (4 emails + ms exchange calendar), screen brightness full & continuous 4G network.

Stay on 4.3 or upgrade?

It appears a more of people are having battery drain issues.
It also appears some have resolved that by factory reset.

I'm not keen on factory reset. my device is set up exactly way i want it. Can't be bothered to factory reset m

Thanks
 

antique_sonic

Senior Member
Aug 16, 2009
2,127
1,052
Corner of the earth
What's the verdict gentlemen?

Should I upgrade?

I am currently on stock nonrooted 4.3.

Battery life is amazing while sync is on (4 emails + ms exchange calendar), screen brightness full & continuous 4G network.

Stay on 4.3 or upgrade?

It appears a more of people are having battery drain issues.
It also appears some have resolved that by factory reset.

I'm not keen on factory reset. my device is set up exactly way i want it. Can't be bothered to factory reset m

Thanks

If u can't be bothered to factory reset, then just stay.
:)


Sent from somewhere under the sky, at the corner of this rounded earth.
 

ewok666

Senior Member
Apr 4, 2006
551
53
What's the verdict gentlemen?

Should I upgrade?

I am currently on stock nonrooted 4.3.

Battery life is amazing while sync is on (4 emails + ms exchange calendar), screen brightness full & continuous 4G network.

Stay on 4.3 or upgrade?

It appears a more of people are having battery drain issues.
It also appears some have resolved that by factory reset.

I'm not keen on factory reset. my device is set up exactly way i want it. Can't be bothered to factory reset m

Thanks

If you're not going to root then don't upgrade as you'll lose most write access to your SD card. Thank the idiots at Google for that stupid idea.

And if you're not having any issues with the phone now then there may not be much in it for you.
 

CorruptedSanity

Senior Member
Oct 7, 2007
1,104
66
41
Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates
Exactly.

None of the new features are important to me.

Certainly not worth risking battery life - in what appears be a very haphazard move Samsung.
Some people affected & some unaffected.
Am I supposed to make a gamble or an educated decision?
 
Last edited:

antique_sonic

Senior Member
Aug 16, 2009
2,127
1,052
Corner of the earth
Exactly.

None of the new features are important to me.

Certainly not worth risking battery life - in what appears be a very haphazard move Samsung.
Some people affected & some unaffected.
Am I supposed to make a gamble an educated decision?

If u r a challenging person, go nd try. But remember to factory reset. :)
Battery life is not a problem to my device, as the life is close to 4.3 I use earlier.
But 4.4 in my personal oppinion is worth a try.

Sent from somewhere under the sky, at the vorner of this rounded earth.
 
May 4, 2014
41
6
I don't know if this thread is still valid; I think it is. You can root a phone with 4.3 without tripping Knox, install 4.4 while keeping root and still without tripping Knox.
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2522729

However you have said you're uneager to do a factory reset, let alone the whole root, flash shebang.

Since everything is already working well for you, I would keep Jellybean. Moving to KitKat will definitely mean one of the following for you:
- don't root, most of your SD card access blocked, can't switch back to Jellybean, can no longer root without tripping Knox
- root, and trip Knox
- use the thread above to root without tripping Knox, losing your current setup

Option 1, 2 and 3 all come with the added possibility of the two handfuls of problems that were reported with KitKat, such as battery, screen mirroring, unofficial S-view cases not working, etc. Someone even unlocked the multi-window app in Jellybean to have moar multiwindows, but KitKat reduced the functionality of that too.

My phone came with Kitkat so if I want to fix the SD card problem, I have to trip Knox. Great. I wish I had 4.3.
 
4.4.2 = Meh.

I sincerely regret updating. 4.4.2 gave very little and took quite a lot.

- serious r/w MicroSD issues
- Can't downgrade
- Android OS battery drain (Although I'm doubting that. Yesterday I played Oh Edu! Towns (a town building game that's quite heavy) for 8 hours straight, and it(stock, BBS and GSAM) said the game used 2% and Android OS 22%. Somehow I doubt that.)
- Lockscreen shortcuts are gone. In 4.3 you an still add them through the activities of 3rd party launchers. In fact, most of the activities are suddenly useless (amongst which the option to disable Pagebuddy for headset plugin).
 
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j_hansen

Senior Member
Oct 19, 2012
400
87
updating did absolutely nothing for me, had bad battery drain the first couple of days but after a couple of charging cycles and few restarts it has settled but is still not as good as when I was still on 4.3, if I had known what I know now I would have stayed with 4.3 instead I'll probably just root the thing and flash the Assassin ROM since there is no going back to 4.3 once update to sh_itcat is done
 

Kremata

Senior Member
Dec 26, 2011
1,080
1,269
Montreal-Shanghai
OnePlus 8T
I used to be a Android fan and advocate since Frodo. But since 4.2 and up, my love for Android is going down on every upgrade. For me an upgrade is when you introduce new features and make old features work better. But Android is going backward. Some features end up broken and some others, plainly disappears. Paid apps that used to work just fine doesn't work anymore.

SD Card access - gone
Cifs mounting - Not supported anymore (this one was very important for me)
Battery not as good as 4.2
Lots of apps not working anymore
KNOX is an unnecessary plague. (This could have easily be an option for business people.)(This is Samsung not Andoid.)
Worst of all, Can't downgrade to earlier version.:(:(:(

I'm really looking forward the new Ubuntu Edge, hope it's as cool as they say.
 

Atomix86

Senior Member
Jul 5, 2011
1,170
273
What's this about micro sd issues on kit kat? I don't have any issues at all.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app
 

nobrakes

Senior Member
Oct 25, 2006
256
65
What's this about micro sd issues on kit kat? I don't have any issues at all.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Free mobile app

The problem I have with the sd card issue is I can delete and copy files from external sd card fine but after rebooting my phone all the files I deleted are still there and the files I copied to the card are gone. I've done the sd card fix by editing the platform.xml file and still have this problem.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk 2
 

kurleedaddee

Member
Mar 30, 2012
11
6
I updated to 4.4.2 last Friday. I found this thread and was disappointed in my decision to update. But too late.

Seemed like my battery was draining crazy fast. I read a few more threads about saving the battery. Turned off Hangouts and the GPS. Restarted it during the weekend at least 5 times. So far the battery drain has improved and is as good as it was on 4.2. Not too mad at the update now.
 

Alex Atkin UK

Senior Member
Jan 4, 2007
261
12
4.4.2 has turned my Note 3 into a pile of crap.

Lots of things crash after bootup (background tasks trying to start) and I constantly get "Internet connection is unstable" on both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz (it only happened on 5Ghz on 4.3). The widgets on my home screen regularly lock up too.

I am now preparing to restore factory settings in the hope that it actually fixes this as its barely usable.

[UPDATE]

Looking promising so far, its downloading all my apps again and no "Internet connection is unstable" messages yet.
 
Last edited:

alom5

Senior Member
Dec 4, 2010
880
208
The update is really pointless. All it seems to do is tighten the noose on control for 'them' no improvement for the user whatsoever. Stick to 4.3

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
 

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    4.4.2 = Meh.

    I sincerely regret updating. 4.4.2 gave very little and took quite a lot.

    - serious r/w MicroSD issues
    - Can't downgrade
    - Android OS battery drain (Although I'm doubting that. Yesterday I played Oh Edu! Towns (a town building game that's quite heavy) for 8 hours straight, and it(stock, BBS and GSAM) said the game used 2% and Android OS 22%. Somehow I doubt that.)
    - Lockscreen shortcuts are gone. In 4.3 you an still add them through the activities of 3rd party launchers. In fact, most of the activities are suddenly useless (amongst which the option to disable Pagebuddy for headset plugin).