ICS discussion thread

[Deleted User]

Using the Samsung stock Sense UI (that is Sense, right?)

Actually Samsung's UI is called TouchWiz. Sense is HTC's UI.

Thus far, I'm pretty underwhelmed with the update, and rather annoyed that I accidentally applied it.

For me, if it weren't for the horrible battery drain the update would be good for me. I like being able to use the stock ICS launcher and having Chrome installed.

 

[nchargreed]

After nearly a week of playing around with my OTA pushed ICS, I cannot find a single reason why I should keep it.:dontknow: Reasons I'm ditching it are numerous but at the top of the list is the HORRIBLE BATTERY DRAIN, incompatible apps (used routinely on GB), Ringtones playing at random times, Voice Talk issues, and the fact that ICS no longer supports Facebook photos synced into Contacts. edit: also adding phone overheating in 3G mode

I'm no techy but my disdain for the highly anticipated ICS led me to spend the best part of an evening researching and finally FLASHING BACK to return my phone to the stock unrooted GB...thankyouverymuch!

I am sooo annoyed that Sprint would roll this out A SECOND TIME. If I pitched a concept to my company as full of holes as ICS, I'd be sent packing to Switzerland to make cheese!

 

[godsdragon]

Has anyone replied to the phone getting hot? Mine was crazy the other night.

I did not find a thread that talked about the issue, so I created one...

http://androidforums.com/samsung/597488-sgs2-epic-overheating-too-much.html

 

[samsungadvice]

Not forgetting vanilla ice cream sandwich features like face unlock

 

[s_special]

i don't remember any other android update which caused more problems out of the gate then ICS. first it was my asus tablet (took about 3 months for a OTA fix) and now my phone.

 

[mhennessy]

I just received the ICS update on my Sprint Galaxy S2 and I don't see any changes: there's no face unlock, camera is the same - (I always had the panoramic feature) - without any of the supposedly new features. The only change I see is with the icons for gmail. Did something go wrong? Any insight would be appreciated!

 

[bencurt24]

you have to go into the security section to get the facelock feature. there are more changes you're just probably not looking for them. Nothing more special than gingerbread... plus with the terrible battery life its almost worse than gingerbread....

 

[andrewjs18]

I had to stop using ICS as it was causing more headaches than I was wanting to deal with.

for me, here are the few problems I had:

the phone itself seemed a lot slower;
at times the home button wouldn't work whatsoever; and
my wireless would not stay connected.

I didn't have any of these problems on 2.3.6 so I rolled it back and the phone seems to be back to normal again.

 

[Deleted User]

plus with the terrible battery life its almost worse than gingerbread....

I think this is the biggest feature of ICS. Sprint and Samsung must have worked overtime to provide us with incredibly short battery life....

 

[bencurt24]

Yes they have.... I still stand by the saying " if it isn't broke don't fix it" Sprint and samsung's saying is " If it isn't broke, Fix it and make it worse"

 

[GodofWar]

My GSII is a few months old, apparently I should have waited for the S III but oh well. Upgrade to 4.0.4 went well, but also experienced the battery drain. Sitting idle, the OS is using 49% of the battery time, otherwise it's generally around 62%, WiFi is currently using 2%. I noticed the drain the next day because it drained overnight, never looked for an issue online. Seems like it is slightly better now, but I'm still charging more than I used to & it's going into power saving mode much quicker. I'll monitor it for a couple more days & thenback everything up & reset it.

 

[bencurt24]

how many hours are you getting on a charge?

 

[Lambertoid]

ics update wasent great it was like when i had the evo and they went to gingerbread and i went crazy but this i was ready for now my epic is running fine only thing was battery drain so (1) i backed up and formatted my SD card then (2) bought an extended battery pack and i sale cars 12 hour day so it was much needed anyway... Well now why i am upset with the ics update is there was not much changed but yet i just read the droid 4 i believe it was is about to get it and it did change a good amount same with the razer....thats the only problem that bumed me out...

 

[mhennessy]

I do not have any of the new features that are highlighted in this site, for instance:
Android - Introducing Ice Cream Sandwich. My contacts are the same, the photo editing has not changed, etc. Literally not one of these features are on my phone. I wonder what happened with this update?

 

[charliehorse]

I updated my GalaxySII to ICS 4.0.4 the other day and immediately the battery was useless. It would die in about an hour!!! after a full charge. I read to do this somewhere else and it worked for me.

I had 3 email accounts, gmail, yahoo, and work outlook. When I went to Settings>Battery it showed that 'Exchange Server' was using 80%+ of my battery.

I deleted the email accounts and then reinstalled them and now 'Exchange Server' is only 2%, with Screen being #1 at ~40% and Android OS #2 at ~24%.

My battery is back to normal and it even seems to be better than before. :smokingsomb::smokingsomb::smokingsomb:

(Also, my only other gripe with ICS is that my contacts are no longer in the 'Phone' icon.) any hep with that??

 

[Deleted User]

I updated my GalaxySII to ICS 4.0.4 the other day and immediately the battery was useless. It would die in about an hour!!! after a full charge. I read to do this somewhere else and it worked for me.

I had 3 email accounts, gmail, yahoo, and work outlook. When I went to Settings>Battery it showed that 'Exchange Server' was using 80%+ of my battery.

I deleted the email accounts and then reinstalled them and now 'Exchange Server' is only 2%, with Screen being #1 at ~40% and Android OS #2 at ~24%.

My battery is back to normal and it even seems to be better than before. :smokingsomb::smokingsomb::smokingsomb:

(Also, my only other gripe with ICS is that my contacts are no longer in the 'Phone' icon.) any hep with that??

Glad you resolved your battery problems. For your contacts question, when you are in 'Phone", press the menu key and then you can access your contacts.

 

[MerpsMom]

I thought I'd received the new update but hadn't: something else had messed with my phone which a Sprint phone rep fixed.

My Question: the new update nudge keeps showing up in front of me on the phone. I don't think I want the update due to what I've been reading here.

How do I eliminate the nudge??

MerpsMom

 

[Deleted User]

I thought I'd received the new update but hadn't: something else had messed with my phone which a Sprint phone rep fixed.

My Question: the new update nudge keeps showing up in front of me on the phone. I don't think I want the update due to what I've been reading here.

How do I eliminate the nudge??

MerpsMom

As far as I know there isn't a way to permanently dismiss the pop up.

 

[Ausarun]

My Samsung Epic 4G phone was updated to ICS 4.0.4 now I can no longer connect it to my Windows 7 PC as a removeable disk. Before the update, I would use the following steps to connect and I would see 2 removeable disks- 1 each for the internal storage and SD card:
1. Press > and tap > Wireless and network > USB utilities.
2. Tap Connect storage to PC > Connect USB storage.

How can I work around this limitation in ICS? I need to see the removeable disks and not the phone as an additional device.

 

[Deleted User]

My Samsung Epic 4G phone was updated to ICS 4.0.4 now I can no longer connect it to my Windows 7 PC as a removeable disk. Before the update, I would use the following steps to connect and I would see 2 removeable disks- 1 each for the internal storage and SD card:
1. Press > and tap > Wireless and network > USB utilities.
2. Tap Connect storage to PC > Connect USB storage.

How can I work around this limitation in ICS? I need to see the removeable disks and not the phone as an additional device.

When you connect your phone via usb to your computer, go to notifications and see if you see Connected as a media device. Click it. Is MTP checked?

 

[rickyrazorwire]

Reposting this in relevant topic.

*got a new S2 as my two year upgrade on the 6th of this month and LOVED it. The day I got it I stayed up all night setting it up, putting in contacts, messaging people with with Swype, putting music on my SD card, etc. Just playing with it. And I was pleasantly surprised that even with the heavy (i.e. constant) use that I got 12 hours of battery life. I charged it up and over the next few days I was getting 18 to 24 hours with medium/normal use. This was running on Gingerbread 2.3.6 and you can probably guess where this ia going.I got the 4.0.4 OTA update and like many of you, was having some serious problems. I watched my battery life LITERALLY draining right before my eyes while the phone wasnt doing anything. I checked the RAM usage and it had jumped from about 115 MB of processes to about 450. That day the battery only lasted 8 hours with light use. I was pissed. The only apps I had installed on the phone were twitter and a torrent app. Both of those weren't running but i had about 30 other processes running that everytime i would clear the data cache they would just start back up.*That night I took the phone back to Radio Shack in hopes that they could roll me back to GB. All they did was factory reset me and I was still running ICS. But after the reset, the battery did get a LITTLE better. It lasted about 10 hours with heavy use, and around 18 to 20 with normal use. Not as good as GB but better. I decided that since I am still with my 30 day period that maybe I should switch the phone out for a new one but they were out of white ones and told me to come back Thursday when the shipment came in.*Meanwhile, I came here looking for answers. I read about using Odin to flash the firmware back. Great, this should be easy! So I thought. My windows xp computer doesn't recognize the new MTP on 4.0.4 so no USB connection is possible. So I tried a battery calibration method I read about here. Basically a hard reset, but when i replaced the battery and started up, it was at only 95 percent and I watched it drop to 90 within minutes. Right back to how I was after the ICS update. My phone has died within 3 hours and is telling me to plug into the charger as i type this. My dads S2 (running GB) gets 24 to 36!*So should I just get the new phone on Thursday and end this madness? I'm really lost here.

 

[rickyrazorwire]

Sorry for no paragraph breaks i didnt mean to make a wall of text.

 

[adaaaam]

Early,

Short of doing a full-frontal-assault hard reset, what are the best practices for clearing as many cache repositories as possible? Is there a simple way to clear all caches in just a few taps?

Why yes there is. If unrooted download App Cache Cleaner which with one tap performs the equivalent of going into each individual app's settings and pressing clear cache. If rooted CacheMate is the most popular. It will also clear cache only accessible with root privileges, also with one tap.

 

[ams30gts]

ICS is such a headache. Was horrible on my ASUS Transformer and now on my GS2.

The phone seems to lock up and then cause it to shutdown. This happens roughly 1-2 times per hour if in use.

 

[Ausarun]

When you connect your phone via usb to your computer, go to notifications and see if you see Connected as a media device. Click it. Is MTP checked?

Yes but I DO NOT want to connect as a media device, I need to connect as an external USB drive. i.e. Windows Explorer should show "Removeable disk x" and "Removeable disk y"