20 July 2014

android L on my nexus 5

the horrible battery life of the android 4.4.4 (kitkat) update has finally pushed me to installing the android L sdk on my nexus 5. i followed this simple guide from lifehacker to swap out the rom.

i did screw up a little. i made backups of all my stuff including imaging my 4.4.4 rom. but then i forgot tot pull them off my n5 before executing the update which effectively wiped it all out. (the titanium backups for some reason didn’t send to my dropbox despite having space free. now, i can’t back up components with it since it’s not android L ready at the time of this post.)

so far, it seems stable. the interface is clean, and i like the notifications especially on the lock screen.

time will tell whether the battery life will improve from the two steps backwards with 4.4.4.



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update: after running the sdk for a while, the battery life is improved over the kitkat 4.4.4 upgrade. that last kitkat upgrade was pretty bad. let’s hope the full L-release doesn’t take us back a step again.

oh, i did find a few apps not L-ready. amazon’s shopping app’s buy/share buttons are functionless. no matter how many times you press them, nothing happens.

also, weather underground’s app has the daily/hourly precipitation percentages missing from the display. that one is a little odd, but that seems to be the only problem with the app.