"Fix" your 2012 Nexus 7 slowness on Android 5.0 Lollipop and above.

If you've got a 2012 Nexus 7, then updating it to Android 5.0 Lollipop and over is likely to be the worst mistake you can make in regards to the software on this tablet. If you did not upgrade it yet to Lollipop, I would recommend NOT doing it (yes, I know, update notifications can be annoying). If you updated it, then just keep reading. I will explain to you what you can do in order to relieve yourself from the stress that any 5.0 and above firmware is creating while using the tablet.


There is one single thing that can be done in order to fix the incredibly poor performance of the tablet: to downgrade it to Android 4.4 KitKat or below. Trust me, I have tried almost 10 different ROMs which run from 5.0 all the way to 5.1.1, and I am still trying to understand what is going on through the head of whoever is responsible at Google for providing these updates on the tablet.

Luckily, since it is an Android tablet, downgrading is extremely simple.

• if you've got a tablet with an unlocked bootloader and a custom recovery, I would recommend following getting this link and getting the provided ROM (it is pre-rooted). I've got the Odexed 1.6 version and it works flawlessly. Since you are downloading this version, I assume you already know how to flash that (gapps are included and do not need to be flashed separately);

• otherwise, you can follow this official link for the official Factory Images (I would recommend downloading the 4.4.4 image). More detailed instructions are available here, but please make sure you are downloading a pre-Lollipop version and flashing that on the device, not the latest version which is 5.1.1!

The reason for the extremely poor performance of the 2012 Nexus 7 on Lollipop ROMs is not clear. People speculate it might be due to flash wear-out but this is highly unlikely due to the fact that KitKat is running as new once installed. It is true that it has only 1GB of RAM and the pressure for low prices might have forced Asus to put low quality (thus slow) components that provide insufficient IO speed. But that does not explain the fact that a similar device which was also sold cheaply, the Nexus 4 is absolutely flying through Lollipop (the Nexus 4 does have 2GB of RAM, but this is not an excuse for the low memory killer on all Lollipop versions not being much more aggressive in order to keep the tablet usable, this, of course, provided that RAM was the culprit). 

Thank you for reading these and please let me know if downgrading to KitKat managed to help you!

Antennagate passed, Glassgate has just started. What's up next, Apple?

The antennagate madness seems to be finished now (everybody knows now that Apple's faulty design is causing signal lose, or even call drops), and the next problem, generically named glassgate, has just started. It was believed that it was just the creation of the competitors, but it seems to be quite real now because Apple has taken measures against this problem.

It is not clear how resistant the glass from the back of the device is, as there were reports which said that after the device has been repeatedly taken out and inserted back from and in some cases, scratches occurred on that glass. It seems that dust particles can get stuck when the cases are inserted (between the case and the glass), causing serious scratches on the glass. In fact, these scratches will, eventually, create cracks on the whole glass surface from the back of the iPhone 4.

It seems that Apple is aware of this issue, because they pulled from the Apple Stores from all around the world all cases of this type (at least until this problem is clarified). So, if you don't have a case, you'll get call drops because of the way Apple designed iPhone's antenna. But if you get one (anything else except the bumper), you risk to have the glass from the back of the device even cracked.

I already see Apple telling everybody that their products doesn't have any issues, and users are the only ones responsible for that scratches/cracks (just as they did with Antennagate).

Apple still doesn't admit that iPhone 4 has problems with signal reception.

Everybody hoped that Apple will, in a final, admit that the iPhone 4 has problems with signal reception, at the conference they organized today. But Apple still doesn't admit this, saying that "phones aren't perfect", and declaring that BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris and Samsung Omnia II have the same... little issues. This surely wasn't the answer that anybody wanted to hear.

The only good news is that Apple will offer free Bumpers for everybody who own an iPhone 4 (what an incredible fix, Apple!), and when they will run out of Bumpers, another accessory for your device will be offered. But this happens as long as you bought your phone before September 30th. They also claim that they spent over $100 million in special rooms, where they tested iPhone's antenna, and they didn't discover any problem. 

Moreover, they also said that only 0.55% of iPhone 4 owners called AppleCare to complain about the reception issues. If anybody finds details about this problem on the internet, who they think that is going to call them just to be told that the phone doesn't have any problem with antenna?!

Personally, I am completely disappointed by this policy of Apple. Are they ever going to admit (maybe in the following 50 years) that the iPhone 4 had problems with antenna? 

iPhone 4 just arrived, as well as major problems.

iPhone 4, the phone which "changes everything, again", seems to fail quite much this time. The guys from Engadget have been using the iPhone 4 for 6 days now (this is really interesting), and they noticed some scratches on the back of the device. Apple said that this "Gorilla Glass" which covers the front and the back of the device is...I don't know how many times resistant than normal plastic, and it is very hard to scratch.  However, the guys from Engadget got it scratched. More here (+photos).

The front of the unit doesn't stay better, also. After just 4 drops on asphalt, the screen broke. Probably the screen didn't work anymore, but they (the guys from Engadget) couldn't test that, because the device stopped working from the second drop already!!! More here (photo+video).

There are problems, again, with the screen. Many users are seeing yellow spots at the bottom of the screen. It is not known if this is a manufacturing fail or an IPS LCD issue, but it is clear that there are problems with the screen. Apple said that they are working on a fix, but it is improbable that they are going to resolve something as they had 600 000 requests on the first day of pre-orders, and most probably there are over 1 million devices coming to their customers currently. Anyway, it seems that IPS screens are harder to create than it was thought, so only a half of Apple 4 units can be delivered at expected time. So, I think that it is 99% sure that we'll have problems with the stocks, again.

There are also problems with the signal. Cellular signal. We don't know yet if there are problems with the Wi-Fi, because there weren't any reports saying this, but as Apple's products are usually having problems with the  Wi-Fi, it is expected to come in the following period reports confirming this or not. Certain is that there are major problems with the cellular signal. If the device is kept on a flat table, the signal is excellent, the new construction of Apple does it's job excellent (the antenna is integrated on the structure of the device). But in the moment you take the device in your hand, the signal decreases, until it loses it. If you put the device on the table, it gets the signal again and goes even until full.

More about these two problems here (photos+video+polls).

Are you having any of these problems? Please leave a comment to let us know if you have or not.

Mac OS X 10.5.8 gets serious Wi-Fi bugs with latest update (May 2010).

Today I've decided to update my MacBook with the latest updates from 10.5.8, because it warned me in the last few days that updates are available. I know that it was the iTunes 9.1.1, a security update, and another one, which I can't remember exactly. I'm not sure if it wasn't the AirPort Base Station, which appears to be last updated on 31st of March ( I think it wasn't this because it's too early). But this doesn't matter now.

Everything worked fine, my Mac has been successfully updated, but after the first boot, the problems started. Mac OS X 10.5.8 is sometimes completely unable to communicate with my router via Wi-Fi (Asus WL 520-GU), which is my default internet gateway. Communication with my secondary router works (this is actually an Asus WL 520-GC, not GU), but it is useless since I can't access the internet at all (the secondary router is used to amplify the signal).

An temporary solution is to turn off the AirPort and start it again, but I can't do this again and again, every 15-20 minutes. I've surfed the internet and I found that a problem like this was occurred on the previous year, somewhere in September, again, after an update.

I'm now afraid that it will take a while until Apple will fix this, because they are now concentrating on the iPad/iPhone HD/4G/ iPhone OS 4.0, and I have the sensation that Mac OS X is currently not a priority for them. I hope I'm wrong.

If you have the same issues, please don't hesitate to leave a comment to let me know I'm not the only one having these issues !