KitKat or Lollipop
January 28, 2015 3:21 PM   Subscribe

I have a 2012 version of the Nexus 7. It's been bugging me to upgrade to Lollipop.

Lately, it's bugging me to install Lollipop. I have no problem doing so as long as it doesn't slow my beloved tablet to a crawl.

No one I know has a 2012 and had updated.

If it's important, my brother rooted (?) it. though that didn't make a difference with the KitKat update.

So Hivemind, should I leave well enough alone or go ahead and update it.

As far as usage, i use it to read books and play one world building game.
posted by kathrynm to Technology (15 answers total)
 
We have the 8 Gb version of that and I 'upgraded' to Lollipop. It was a unmitigated disaster. It was sorta clumsy and slow if we didn't switch users. If we attempted to switch users it became entirely unusable and we would have to force a reboot.

Ultimately I downgraded it to Kit Kat which is an enormous PITA.

Seriously, don't do it, you'll regret it.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 3:33 PM on January 28, 2015


My 2012 Nexus 7 was already crawling before upgrading to Lollipop and upgrading made things slightly worse. On the advice of some blog post, I finally did a factory reset which restored the device to a useful speed. Now that I'm running Lollipop at a reasonable speed, I like it, but the changes are largely superficial. Given the risks and reward, I wouldn't bother upgrading until an app you use routinely requires it.
posted by ddbeck at 3:39 PM on January 28, 2015


I have the 16gb 2012 Nexus 7, unrooted and upgraded to Lollipop. It's been running just fine and perhaps slightly better. My only complaint would be that some of the apps I use lost some of their functionality, even the ones that have since been updated to run on Lollipop.
posted by fuse theorem at 3:45 PM on January 28, 2015


I'm usually a bleeding edge guy but I've backed all my devices back from Lollipop to KitKat, for me Android 5.0 is not ready for production. I'm waiting for a 5.1 release.
posted by Cosine at 3:46 PM on January 28, 2015


I used Lollipop for about a week before going back to Kitkat. My experience was that a bunch of the new features were super buggy, and re-designs of existing features were half-baked. If Kitkat's working for you, there's no reason to upgrade.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 4:15 PM on January 28, 2015


I upgraded my 2012 Nexus 7 to Lollipop and after that it was basically useless. I ended up having to install Cyanogenmod to bring the thing back to life.
posted by octothorpe at 4:28 PM on January 28, 2015


We have three 2012 Nexus 7s in our household, and they're all on Lollipop now. One of them seems to have gotten a little slower/glitchier, and the other two are a little faster/better. The update to 5.0.2 seems to have helped a lot on the one that slowed down--I think that since that, they're all as fast or faster than they were before.
posted by MeghanC at 4:30 PM on January 28, 2015


I have the 16 gig and it runs fine with 5.0.x. That said I mostly use it for GPS in my car so it isn't loaded with much software at all.
posted by MillMan at 4:32 PM on January 28, 2015


I've had no problems.
posted by srboisvert at 5:12 PM on January 28, 2015


I'm another Nexus owner (4, 5, 7) who upgraded to Lollipop 5.0.1 and 5.0.2, used it intensively for a few weeks, and then went back to KitKat.

While I knew going in that performance wouldn't be perfect, I was not only surprised by the significant problems with battery life and performance I had, I was also surprised by how much more inconvenient Lollipop was to use than KitKat. The lock screen suddenly and inexplicably needed an extra swipe. Notifications wouldn't flash the LED, and sometimes were invisible from the lock screen. Chronological display of email (without downloading a third-party app) was removed. They took out simple power-button access to silent mode or airplane mode.

The transition from 4.2 to 4.4.4 on each of the Nexus devices was flawless, and delivered a substantially better user experience (especially IRT voice search and Google Now). The transition from 4.4.4 to 5.0.1 or 5.0.2, on the other hand, seemed to break or remove a lot of crucial things in service of some moderate user interface tweaks.

I would wait until 5.1 and see if there's anything worth upgrading. I'm a long-time early adopter and enthusiast, but I'm going to sit out this round - my experience is that Lollipop is the Windows Vista of Android.
posted by eschatfische at 5:50 PM on January 28, 2015


I've idly been investigating getting a nexus 7 2012 or 2013 for androidy things now that i don't have a non-tv-box android device around.

I had a nexus 5, and the upgrade to lollipop was not smooth sailing. i also had an LG G3 running tweaked kitkat, and it was shocking how much more finished and stable that felt even though it was a custom rom. And yes, i waited around for 5.0.1 and such.

Tons of battery life problems and other tiresome stuff. I wouldn't project this on to the 7 from the 5 if i hadn't seen categorical battery life problems on freaking every device i'd seen or heard of someone running lollipop on, official or not. The amount of custom kernels and hax0ring i had to do to my 5 to get it to limp through the day without going flat was not ok.

So yea, not from the horses mouth of someone who specifically owns that device, but i was thinking about buying a cheapo used one and was already planning not to upgrade it.

A lot of the interface tweaks are cute, but the functionality tweaks aren't. And the actual performance of it was just... ugh. Everyone i talked to or saw posts from with a 7, at least for the most part, said the same thing. The 2013 faired better but still had issues, and the 2012 was kind of ouch.
posted by emptythought at 6:23 PM on January 28, 2015


I upgraded my 2012 Nexus 7 to Lollipop and it went from being very slow to very, very slow. Then I did a factory reset and upgraded to Lollipop again, and it works great! I'm still shocked at what a difference the factory reset made.
posted by neushoorn at 12:11 AM on January 29, 2015


I've got a 2012 nexus 7 and upgraded to lollipop. When I first did it, I had two different user profiles on there and it was slow as molasses, especially when connected to the internet. I did a factory reset and use only one profile on it and it works fine. Occasionally slow to respond when it first connects to the internet (I don't have wireless all the time), but since it's making all it's updates/pushes/pulls, that makes sense. I just plan to connect it and give it a few minutes before I try to do anything else.
posted by carrioncomfort at 6:25 AM on January 29, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks all. I think I'll stick with KitKat.
posted by kathrynm at 1:22 PM on January 29, 2015


I have a 32 GB 2012 N7. It was quite slow before and is just about as slow now. I agree that there are some aspects of usability that have been made more awkward but haven't noticed much impact on battery life.

I also have a Nexus 4 that has also been upgraded and runs fine.
posted by sinical at 9:14 PM on January 29, 2015


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