What an unmitigated disaster.
Here's my question Verizon: If Samsung made this announcement nearly 2 months ago, why did Verizon roll it out anyway? If I had tons of free time, maybe I would have kept up with the news about flawed system updates & could have avoided this. But I stupidly relied on Verizon to navigate these issues for me. Now, as another poster mentioned, I'm essentially stuck with a landline. This feels like the nail in the coffin for me and verizon, after more than 10 years. My contract just ended & I am out.
Because people complained and complained and complained about how all the other carriers pushed out the update bugs and all. They caved in. Lose lose for them no matter which way they turned. We showed that exact posting as well as other forums about the problems and they all didn't care.
I got called a shill/employee because I said I rather wait to ensure the problems are fixed, and tried to explain the processes.
DO NOT UPDATE TO 4.3!!! Unless you actually want a phone full of bugs.
After 4.3, wifi connectivity was simply horrible when before it had been flawless. Battery drain reminded me of having a first gen smart phone! Yes, it was that bad. Called Verizon and was treated so rudely, that I couldn't believe these women could possibly be "customer support". They had no clue how to fix the issue nor how to work with a frustrated customer. They recommended backup and a factory reset. That was it.
Went to the store and all staff looked at me as if they had no idea the 4.3 update was causing problems (not surprising as this seems to be the standard customer service response). I asked them to Google it on the spot. They did. Ultimately, the resolution was to send out a new phone still running 4.1.2 (not updated to 4.3).
Got the new phone. Decided to just try the factory reset on my original phone that had been updated to 4.3, just to see what would happen. No improvements. Complete waste of time....as I suspected. But satisfied my curiosity.
Set up the replacement phone running 4.1.2. Took almost a full day. Back to everything running normal. Phone now works great as before. Wifi connectivity and battery drain are no longer any problem.
NOW, Verizon is attempting to push the 4.3 OTA update to my new phone....!!! AND to my wife's GSIII! Can I do anything to prevent this?
NOTE TO VERIZON: If either of those updates are pushed to either of our GSIII phones currently running 4.1.2 and installed WITHOUT our consent (which has NOT been granted), our contract will be immediately be null and void for failure to comply with the original terms of service wherein you have knowingly disabled or rendered useless key features of the original product purchased without our consent.
Absolutely loved the GSIII phones up till now, but with the 4.3 update would definitely NOT recommend them anymore. It's a much different phone with too many bugs.
Reverting back to 4.1.2 is not possible, according to every Verizon rep I spoke to. Only way to do that is to get a replacement phone that has not been updated....which is the route I took.
Samsung blocked downgrading on all their devices. It more than likely has to do with the Knox flag, and warranty.
I will add my problems to this thread:
My screen will not respond coming out of sleep mode, even though the phone is on (lights/indicators still work). Have to pull battery and reboot. Screen will be fine until once again, I place it in sleep. Once I try to wake her up, blackness.
Very frustrating. Paying through the nose for a phone that doesn't work.
My phone updated overnight as that's when I told it to do so.. after it kept asking me everytime it 'woke up' to upgrade... now, I logged on this morning to learn what the new features are and I find this... then I look at my phone that's been unplugged from the charger for 90 minutes and I'm already down to 78% of battery life... 22% of mostly standby while I showered, got dressed and took the dog for a walk and it's 22% down.
Come on Verizon... why did you PUSH OUT this update when you know that this is a problem?
Inquiring minds want to know.
My phone updated overnight: I immediately noticed the change when my alarm went off. The update changed my alarm sound to a relaxing flowing water sound. If it had not been for the cat jumping on me it probably would have relaxed me back to sleep vs. waking me up! It also removed many of my pictures that I had on my various screens. One other update that I noticed was to the txt message section - I really do not need the sender's picture aside of every txt message in a thread. It was much better just once at the top of the screen with all the txt messages below it. I also do NOT need my own picture aside of every txt message in the same thread as - I am fairly sure I know what I look like! I tried to go into settings to change but was not successful. Lastly, per the previous posts I am monitoring my battery. life.
UPDATE I spoke to a Verizon rep last night and they stated Samsung acknowledged the issue on 1-7-14 and are working on a fix. Unfortunately Verizon had no ETA on the update. For once this rep didn’t ask me to do a “Factory Reset” as she had experience with it (Reset) not correcting the issue. She was very nice and actually confirmed that she had many calls on this issue (mostly battery drain). So hang in there….we’ll get a fix eventually. In the meantime, you can try tinkering with Developer settings which might improve the battery and/or the overall operation of the phone. You can access Developer options via Settings – About phone and then repeatedly pressing “Build number” until it states Developer mode has been turned on. Then go back one screen and Developer options will be above “About phone”. Open it and scroll to the bottom. I’m trying the “Limit background processes” option to 4 processes at most. You can also try “Do not keep activities” which essentially closes out every single app after you exit it. I just started to tinker this morning trying to find some relief until we get a fix. Let me know if any of these options help you. You most likely need to try a setting and go through a couple of days of normal use to see if there is a difference. If you don’t like the results you can always disable the settings.
I updated to 4.3 before reading this. Fortunately the only problems I have experienced are the random flash, and my ringtones were reset. Hopefully following the steps in a previous post resolved the flash issue, and ringtones are easy to fix. Otherwise I have not experienced the poor wifi, 4g, batter drain (more than before anyway) or other issues people are reporting.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
