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Samsung Galaxy Nexus won't get updated to Android 4.4 KitKat

Seems ironic that the first Android release the GNex misses out on (officially) is also the one that is designed to be upgradable for older devices.
 
On another site people were pretty much expecting a ROM to be available within a day or 2 for us rooted folks.
 
boathead said:
"Android updates, straight from the source.
With Nexus 5, you’re always the first to get the latest Android updates from Google. It’s like being at the front of the line at every movie premiere."

this is the language on the play store. there is nothing about an 18 month window, and quite frankly i never heard about this window before today.

i am a nexus fanboy, yet the brand is somewhat devalued in my mind now. google can say what they want, but nexus line does not get the latest. i guess only the latest gets the latest.
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You do have to look at the reasoning behind it. Lack of support by Texas Instruments looks to be the main contributing factor. TI announced leaving the SoC business back in Sept. 2012. Google isn't going to make an official release if the guys that manufactured its SoC and provide drivers don't even exist anymore. I'm surprised 4.3 had any support as it is.

Supposedly there's a partially working ROM for 4.4. So its up to the community to get it working now.
 
Hey guys. new to the forums here. I have several devices that I tinker with and use. Ordered the nexus 5 from play store waiting on it in mail. Is there a forum for selling devices here? or does everyone just use swappa? I have nexus4 galaxy nexus and htc one I am looking to sell. I live in a pretty crappy city so CL is kind of scary and I dont have ebay seller account.
 
DarthRaider86 said:
Hey guys. new to the forums here. I have several devices that I tinker with and use. Ordered the nexus 5 from play store waiting on it in mail. Is there a forum for selling devices here? or does everyone just use swappa? I have nexus4 galaxy nexus and htc one I am looking to sell. I live in a pretty crappy city so CL is kind of scary and I dont have ebay seller account.
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We do have a classifieds forum used for buying or selling devices, but it requires that you have 25 meaningful posts, fill out a template form, and provide pictures with some info to show actual possession of the device.
 
jhawkkw said:
We do have a classifieds forum used for buying or selling devices, but it requires that you have 25 meaningful posts, fill out a template form, and provide pictures with some info to show actual possession of the device.
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Oh ok. Well I will just post here about other topics and see if there is anything I can do to help people. If I still have the devices when that time comes I will give it a go. Thank you.
 
I'm using 4.4 on my Verizon Galaxy Nexus (Toro) as I type this. Overall, it's very fast and smooth - and although it's purely subjective, 4.4 certainly 'feels' like an improvement over 4.3 to me.

One clear area of improvement is memory usage. With every prior Android version, I never saw free memory much over 200-230 meg with my usual app load. In 4.4, I'm seeing 345 meg free at this moment! And say what you will about Android memory management, but I've always had better performance with more free memory.

All the basics seem to work very well. The only real issue (and it's a big one) comes when you're using any app that relies on a web view: you get large black rectangles of various dimensions that cover sections of the output. Sometimes scrolling around in a long page and/or reloading the page will cause the blocks to move around or become smaller, but they don't disappear. Apps that use a web view include browsers (it happens with both Chrome and Dolphin), email apps that display HTML-formatted messages, etc. Unfortunately, this problem is so severe that it makes 4.4 unusable as a daily driver on a Galaxy Nexus.

My understanding is that the issue stems from the outdated drivers. It's a huge shame, because it looks like everything else either works already, or will soon given the usual debugging needed with any new ROM.

Since TI is out of the chip business for these phones anyway, I can't see why they couldn't at least release the driver code as open source so ROM developers could try to fix the problems themselves. But it looks like we're out of luck unless someone finds a way to resolve the driver issues.
 
rvonder said:
I'm using 4.4 on my Verizon Galaxy Nexus (Toro) as I type this. Overall, it's very fast and smooth - and although it's purely subjective, 4.4 certainly 'feels' like an improvement over 4.3 to me.

One clear area of improvement is memory usage. With every prior Android version, I never saw free memory much over 200-230 meg with my usual app load. In 4.4, I'm seeing 345 meg free at this moment! And say what you will about Android memory management, but I've always had better performance with more free memory.

All the basics seem to work very well. The only real issue (and it's a big one) comes when you're using any app that relies on a web view: you get large black rectangles of various dimensions that cover sections of the output. Sometimes scrolling around in a long page and/or reloading the page will cause the blocks to move around or become smaller, but they don't disappear. Apps that use a web view include browsers (it happens with both Chrome and Dolphin), email apps that display HTML-formatted messages, etc. Unfortunately, this problem is so severe that it makes 4.4 unusable as a daily driver on a Galaxy Nexus.

My understanding is that the issue stems from the outdated drivers. It's a huge shame, because it looks like everything else either works already, or will soon given the usual debugging needed with any new ROM.

Since TI is out of the chip business for these phones anyway, I can't see why they couldn't at least release the driver code as open source so ROM developers could try to fix the problems themselves. But it looks like we're out of luck unless someone finds a way to resolve the driver issues.
Click to expand...

For me, Chrome is NOT affected. It works exactly as it should. Just email apps and BaconReader, which use the web views.

I'm going to see how long I can pull this off as a daily driver.
 
the guys at XDA are using a custom kernel and having no issues, we should have a solid trouble-free 4.4 ROM very soon. We can probably make this phone last a while longer, at least until the next gen of "must have" phones.
 
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