Droid Razr M: KitKat update problems

[RazrM-user1]

@ jejouelaflute....   it is like Hotel California.   Once you go, you cant go back....that is once you go to kitkat, you cannot go back to jellybean   (unless you take your phone to an independent private cell phone repair shop, have them root your phone and reflash with a bootleg copy of jelly bean, then turn off notifications in the admin portion of the program.

[wb4zit]

I am furious with Verizon over this Kitkat upgrade. It wiped out the Bluetooth pairing for all of my vehicles and my laptop. It changed all of my ringtones and notifications. And the battery life has gone to crap on my Razr Maxx HD which has had outstanding battery life of a year and a half.

The nitpicking stuff is I do not like most of the changes in colors they made, particularly to white instead of blue on the notification bar.

But this upgrade is a total cluster....err....goat rope. I've been fooling with this phone all day just to try to get back where I was before the upgrade and I still have not made it yet.

And do you think they could have bothered to tell someone they were changing the Answer button from a Touch to a Swipe. Could they have not afforded to put the word SWIPE-----> with an arrow or something on the screen somewhere?

Worst upgrade experience I have ever had with ANY company....including ANY computer software company. I am absolutely FURIOUS.

Verizon.....roll this abortion back and try again later. And FIX MY BATTERY LIFE.

[vzw_customer_support]

wb4zit We want you to love your phone again. We apologize for the issues since the Kit Kat update. All manufactures which released the update working on a fix. In the meantime, some customers have found success with basic troubleshooting. The bluetooth is working as designed and will need to be paired when entering the vehicle. There is not a way to revert back to the previous software. As for the battery, is the gps on when not in use? Check settings and location services and disable is it's not being used.

Sheritah_vzw
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@VZWSupport

[droidrazrmaxxhd]

Worthless script response as usual.

On Jun 23, 2014 6:44 AM, "Verizon Wireless Customer Support" <

[steve_o]

I had a battery app running on my phone (for months) pre-KitKat update on my Droid Razr M, beginning on 11/30/2013 through 03/29/2014 (approx 18000 readings).  The KitKat update was pushed to my phone on May 23, 2014 & I have had the same battery app installed & running since then (approximately 150+/- time/temp/charge/discharge readings per day both before & after). 

I have tried numerous things including clearing the cache and have been able to do nothing that makes any difference whatsoever.  I have experienced numerous conditions similar those noted by many in this thread, including:

1. Rapid discharge of the phone.  It usually drops about 10% per hour once disconnected from an AC source.  This drop is with no use whatsoever (wi-fi is off).  Any  use at all effectively doubles the discharge rate.   Prior to KitKat, the 10% drop (with no usage & wi-fi off) was approximately 3 hours. 
2. The phone speaker "pops" or has a statc-y sounding, audible "click" when taking the phone from sound-vibrate-silent or vice-versa.  It will do it one time only.  However, if you wait a few minutes, performing that same cycle (on or off) will reproduce the effect.  I've made multiple changes in the Sounds settings in the setup menu, none make any difference. 
3. Random phone re-starts.  No obvious event has triggered it.  It has been sitting on the charger, and will randomly re-start with no intervention from me. 
4. Wild variations of reception, both 3G/4G and wi-fi.  Areas that had formerly been very good, strong signals now are so-so.  Also, the drop-off in signal is immediate and drastic. 
5. I've re-booted in safe mode (for days) in order to rule out a rogue application.  Phone performance has been the same - rapid discharge, speaker popping, spotty reception.  In safe mode, the phone was noticeably warmer. 
6. The same four items consume about 75% of battery use at any given time.  Android OS (usually about 30%+), Android System (usually between 15%-25%),  Google Services (between 10%-15%) and Screen (anywhere from 10%-30% depending on usage). 

I've been on with Verizon tech support a couple times, and have done everything they have asked me to do thus far.  I will not do a Factory Data Reset on the phone & lose everything because it's time consuming to restore it all, plus there was nothing obviously wrong with the phone prior to KitKat being rolled out. 

Here are some of the things I've been able to determine in comparing the battery logs between the pre-KitKat and post-KitKat operating system update. 

• Average Phone temperature: JellyBean - 81 degrees (F). KitKat - 89 degrees (F).
• Max Phone temperature:  JellyBean - 110 degrees (F).  KitKat - 115 degrees (F).
• Min Phone temperature:  JellyBean - 61 degrees (F).  KitKat - 71 degrees (F).
• KitKat - Temperature is over 90 degrees (F) over 50% of the time.
• JellyBean - Temperature is below 90 degrees (F) almost 80% of the time. 
• Average Millivolts (mV) is approximately the same:  4163 (JellyBean) & 4126 (KitKat).
• Average MilliAmps (mA) is nearly 5x different.  -34 (JellyBean) versus -141 (KitKat).

I had traded in a pocket warmer (Droid Razr) for the Razr M almost a year ago, after having heat issues with the Razr getting in excess of 150 degrees (F) on multiple occasions with little use.  The Razr M had been more than adequate, especially in terms of holding a charge, as I would often charge it all day & then have confidence enough to leave it off the charger at night, and still retain about 60% charge the following morning.  That is, until KitKat rolled out & ruined this phone. 

It seems obvious to me that the KitKat OS is much less efficient in how it consumes power to do the same things as the preceding OS, and by forcing the CPU, display and other things to run at higher temps is shortening the lifespan of the phone.  It's definitely made it considerably less reliable and usable.  I doubt that I will continue to use this phone if the update to "fix" it takes a while to be available; plus the implementation of KitKat and the problems it has introduced don't exactly inspire a lot of confidence that the "update" won't be worse than the existing OS.

[stef7]

steve_o, you wrote:

I will not do a Factory Data Reset on the phone & lose everything because it's time consuming to restore it all, plus there was nothing obviously wrong with the phone prior to KitKat being rolled out.

I'm just an end-user like yourself. Honestly, I believe your logic (the part underlined) is faulty. Updates, and this one was major are not guaranteed to prevent issues during the upgrade process. You really must plan for and perform an FDR. The more experience you have with the Android platform, the more likely it is you will have personally come to this conclusion yourself and have had experience doing FDRs... For some of us, it's a challenge to see how quickly we can restore the phone to something we are used to.

On many devices over the years, maybe having had 10 updates OTA, 60% of the time, I had to perform an FDR. YMMV, but there are posts all over the internet where people have performed an FDR, and as if by magic, their device behavior improves considerably.

Granted, there are issues that will not be corrected with an FDR. A patch will be necessary for those.

If you don't go through the trouble of doing and FDR - you simply won't know if the behavior you are seeing with the battery drain is going to be corrected.

There are other suggestions in another thread which might benefit you, but the first and strongest suggestion I could make to you would be, bite the bullet, back up your important stuff to a PC that you can't live without, and perform the FDR. Give the unit three charge cycles to model battery consumption better.

You can do the backup and FDR in the time it would take to write a few good posts like yours above.

FWIW: if there is some fix / patch developed for other behaviors, you'll probably have to perform an FDR after installing it. Also, look around at some of the other threads for other phones. Other people have been experiencing shortened battery life on their devices. It's not unique to yours... Don't assume that the KK design is less efficient as to how it uses resources because other people experience battery drain as well.

Instead, it's likely, they have to perform a FDR post-update and have not.

[droidrazrmaxxhd]

Don't bother doing a fdr... it's not gonna fix anything. Been there done

that wah wah wah.

[steve_o]

@stef7 - I respectfully disagree with you. None of the reported problems I

have experienced since the KitKat update were present prior to the update.

Since I had started it in Safe Mode & let it remain that way for several

days, that should have been running solely on the new, updated OS only and

would also rule out a rogue application that was behaving badly. Also, the

fact that the sound problem persisted in Safe Mode (which wasn't there

prior to the update) would indicate to me that the new OS was creating the

problem. The fact that similar issues have been reported across multiple

devices with the new OS would seem to rule out a bad application and

confirm the one common item (the OS) as the source of the problems.

As I look at my phone now, nothing is running on it, yet the OS (31%),

Google Services (21%) & Android System (20%) are consuming over 2/3 of the

battery resources over the last half hour. The previous OS was over 100

degrees (F) a hundred times over a 4 month span. KitKat has been over that

temperature 200 times in 20 days. The new OS is literally cooking this

phone.

I shouldn't have to do a Factory Data Reset on the phone to make the new OS

behave, since running in Safe Mode should have loaded the bare bones of the

new OS. Based on what I've heard elsewhere, I also have doubts as to

whether it would fix the problem. I think that this OS has some serious

issues, and may not have been applicable to many phones. It wasn't

something I could easily opt out of, and it certainly isn't what was

advertised.

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 4:11 PM, droidrazrmaxxhd <forums@verizonwireless.com

[franzuber]

accept the fact that we now own less than fully functional phones (removed). verizon has no fix, motorola has no fix and android has no fix. i repeat we own sh*t phones now. there are 2 options.......

1. demand a new phone that is not a motorola. after all the phone they sold you does not work.

2. move to another carrier. if you demand it verizon has to let you out of the contract because your phone does not work.

as i say. we own a piece of sh*t phone now. we can only hope someone develops a fix. i am not going to hang waiting.

verizon has a lot to be ashamed about, but what is new.

Message edited as required by the Verizon Wireless Terms of Service

Message was edited by: Admin Moderator

[stef7]

steve_o.

Your logic remains faulty. Trust me, it is.

You indicate none of the reported problems you've experienced since the KK install were present prior. No disagreement with you there.

But, then to assume this means that KK is broken, -and/or- that you don't need to do an FDR is where your logic breaks down. On top of that, then the assumption that SAFE MODE will demonstrate proper behavior without an FDR is also erroneous.

When an OTA upgrade is pushed to your device, memory is not in a deterministic state. Imagine across all users of the same device... How could it be? When the programs expand out and begin to use available memory allocated for various things, they may pick up values that cause components of the OS and programs expecting certain settings to mis-behave. Some people will experience no problems. Some people will.

ONLY by performing an FDR do you force the phone to initialize memory to a deterministic state that the developers of the OS had when they did their development and testing. It would be ideal if Android didn't require FDRs, but that isn't reality. You'd think you shouldn't have to perform an FDR, and in the ideal world, that would be great.

AFAIK, all that SAFE MODE does is disable downloaded programs / apps you might add on top of the core load to see if they interact negatively with the core load. It does not wipe memory clean. It doesn't take care of the core OS running on improperly initialized memory.

Honestly and practically - the manufacturer, Google, nor VZW are gonna mandate you perform an FDR, because they know if will cause a good number of users inconvenience and potential loss of personal information and settings.

But - you really have to do this if you are experiencing problems.

Granted, with that written, I think there are behaviors (like the MMS issue, and BT/WiFi for some people on some devices) they are going to need a patch. Hey - I'm on an LG G2, and I know Google messed up BT dialing. So I'm using a work-around. I'm disappointed in this aspect of the KK update but it hasn't made my phone junk..

Look, you really don't have that much to lose. By your posts I can tell you approach things in a systematic manner. Do the FDR. I'm not guaranteeing it will fix your battery consumption issue. No one is going to claim that.

FWIW: after my LG G2 got KK, I initially avoided doing an FDR. I had crazy bad battery consumption. I was also displeased with the Dialer as I've said... I performed the FDR. My battery runtime returned... The dialer is still broken though.