"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!

iPhone OS 4.0 - what's new?

Apple's new iPhone OS 4.0 has been announced for a while, and a beta version has also been launched, being available for developers only (I know, it's on torrent networks, but don't attempt to download and install it, because it won't work -- it must be activated with Apple's servers). Now I'm going to describe you what is new inside this version.

A new feature which everybody was waiting for and which Apple decided to implement, is multi-tasking. Or at least, this is what Apple says he has implemented. It won't actually be a full multi-tasking. True, applications like those ones used for music will be making multi-tasking, but games, for example, won't. As Steve Jobs showed in the presentation, if you play a game and you want to....browse a website for example, you have to double-click the home button (the game will pause), go to safari, browse, double-click again, and go to the game, and resume playing. So, the game won't be actually making a real multi-tasking.

Apple said that they didn't implemented multi-tasking since now because it consumes more resources and power, and they have found a method which resolves this. The main advantage of this "multi-tasking" is that apps like Skype can now run in the background, so you don't have anymore to stay into Skype to speak with somebody, without having any possibility to do anything else.

Now, iPhone can finally use folders. You can now put apps for games or for weather together, for example, in a singe folder, so you don't need anymore to browse through more screens just to find an application. This is something good.

Also, you can now set wallpapers. I don't know why Apple didn't implement this earlier, but it's good they finally made it. And you now have "unified" mailbox, so all the mails will come at the same time from all your accounts. This has bad and good points, and in my point of view, I think that it's better without this feature.

What really sucks, is that Apple is going to implement iAd. This means that now everything on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is going to have ads. Steve Jobs said that this is a good feature, and it is, for advertisers, but for regular users, it is a disaster.

And, from what is known, there will still be no Flash in iPhone OS 4.0. This is totally stupid. I now think that the iPhone is never going to have Flash.

Apple says that this upgrade will be available only for future generations of iPhone, and for the 3GS. Guys who are working on jailbreak solutions showed clearly that Apple does this just for the people to buy new iPhones. Because they ran the OS 4.0 beta on both 3G and even 2G, without any difficulty.

And, you have to know that this new software was jailbroken in less than 24 hours since it was launched, so, probably, when the new OS will be available for anybody, jailbreaking will be easily done on any iPhone.

Testing Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) Alpha 3.

Today I've fully upgraded my laptop which had Ubuntu 9.10 on it, to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. The whole upgrade process took some time, but the results are impressive. So, what I've observed in the following 30 mins after the installation:

• The OS moves significantly faster than before
• Notification problems from the previous Alpha release were resolved
• Possible bug with the sound (or only with its icon)
  
• Gwibber added (application, Twitter client)
• Some changes in "Disk Utility" (interface)
• Many programs have up-to-date versions
• Human theme is pretty changed (most obvious changes are related to the panel)
• 2 Completely NEW themes included; one is called "Radiance", and the other one is called "Ambiance"

About the themes. Ubuntu now has on all its themes the buttons for the windows on left (minimize, maximize and close), pretty much like Mac OS X. The new "Radiance" theme is completely inspirited from Mac OS X (wallpaper, colours, buttons, etc), and nobody can tell me that it isn't.

But they are differently placed. They are in the following order: maximize-minimize-close, order which is not present on any other OS. This seemed a little strange, but it didn't create confusion for me. Many Linux users declared that they don't agree with these new buttons, but if you want my opinion, I really like it. Update: the buttons are now placed like in the Mac OS X: close-minimize-maximize.

The other new theme called "Ambiance" is exactly the same with "Radiance", except that it has dark colours. I'm currently really tired, and I observed that "Ambiance" is really relaxing, compared to "Radiance" which has very bright colours and it's pretty unpleasant now. Below is the "Ambiance".
The OS is fully functional, like the previous version, and it is extremely stable (since it's an Alpha version, I was expecting to be pretty unstable). It offers quite a similar experience (compared to 9.10), except that is more responsive and moves faster.