Nougat finally released for the O2 Galaxy S6!!!

[Anonymous]

WOOHOO!!!! Finally!!!!

Some 8 months and 23 days after it was first released, Android Nougat has just been downloaded to my O2 32GB Galaxy S6 and is currently being installed as I type. 

If you have an S6, check your software update in Settings. It wasn't pushed to my device, I manually checked it just now and the update started downloading. I last checked it yesterday and the update wasn't available then, so it must have appeared today.

It's a 1.3gb file, but hopefully it's worth the very long wait.

[MI5]

Yes it could be.

[Anonymous]

Just an update and how I've found it so far.

First off, my S6 is a branded pay monthly O2 contract phone obtained directly from an O2 High Street store.

After installing, I had about an hour of terror thinking that it'd killed my device. I have Secure Startup enabled and after entering my PIN, the device wouldn't boot up and entered a loop of the padlock unlocking itself for over 30 mins. Nothing would work, so in desperation I tried a hard reset (hold power button and volume down until the device powers off). Again, it got stuck on the padlock loop. So I tried another hard reset, still nothing. Then again and again, still looping. After the 4th hard reset, the device finally booted up and I was in. This was a pretty scary hour, I can tell you. I really thought I'd lost my device. 

Someone mentioned battery life being bad and they are right. Battery life is rubbish on the S6 anyway, but it seems a little worse than before. I'm careful with my battery life anyway (I don't have Facebook or Messenger or Snapchat installed, precise GPS location turned off, OK Google voice detection turned off on all screens) but it was a little worse. However, it's only been a couple of days and the device needs to settle down, so that may change. What made battery life better was using the new Doze feature which puts apps to sleep much like Greenify. I noticed things became significantly better after using that, but it's important to exclude such important background apps as Macrodroid, Easy App Switcher etc. in the "Unmonitored Apps" section so they don't get killed.

You will lose the S6 "Smart Manager" app (provided by Clean Master) which now becomes an extra section in the Settings section, although you can add a 1x1 "Optimize" widget to your homescreen to clean in a hurry. 

I do like the new UX, which is  a vast improvement over that horrible Cyan colour. The new drop down menu is great and there's now a Blue Light Filter button for night reading, which is a great improvement. The camera settings have also changed and have become much more simplified, although the front/rear camera switching button has moved to the top left corner, which is annoying. One thing I did notice was that my Samsung text message and phone apps had disappeared from my homescreen (Google Now Launcher) whilst all my other apps were still there, but it was just a case of dragging them out of my app drawer and putting them back again. 

Bad news, though; I still don't have the Google Assistant. That would've been great.

I do seem to have reclaimed around 1gb of space after installing and then wiping my cache partition. I had 5.4gb free before installing, now I have 6.5gb and the only change to my phone I've made was installing the Nougat update.

My biggest tip before upgrading would be; remove anything sensitive from your phone beforehand (just in case it bricks) and TURN OFF Secure Startup if you have it enabled, just in case that was the cause of my padlock looping bootup problems. I don't know if it was a contributing factor or not, but my advice is to turn it off anyway just to play it safe. If it might potentially save you an hour of fear, then it's worth doing. 

I do recommend updating. I'll still be leaving O2 after 15 years over the next few months and jumping ship to EE (roll on Google Pixel 2 and unthrottled 4G data in the continent's capital cities instead of garbage O2 throttled dial up speeds ) but I'm glad I at least got to try Nougat to make the last few months more pleasant. 

[jonsie]

Thank you for telling us your experience and giving a couple of good tips @Anonymous

[GJD]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Just an update and how I've found it so far.

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Could I ask which SMS app you are using? I've had a rant in a separate thread about the stock one that they've gone and hamstrung with the VIEW ALL insanity ...
Thanks!

[jonsie]

I've been using Textra for a couple of months on a Chinese phone. I quite like it....

http://www.androidguys.com/2016/04/12/is-textra-the-best-third-party-sms-app-in-the-play-store-revie...

[Anonymous]

So i've just got my Samsung S6 back from the repair centre and they have installed Nougat for me.

I have to say it feels like a brand new phone (its not) as its so smooth and doesnt lag at all. I haven't had chance really to see how bad battery life is affected but so far i'm impressed.

[jonsie]

Presumably had a factory reset too? 

[Anonymous]

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@jonsie wrote:

Presumably had a factory reset too? 

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Yes it did although i've done factory resets before and its never made much difference

[jonsie]

Nougat is running very smoothly on my J7 Prime but I did a factory reset too as I was wanting to get rid of a lot of stuff I put on in Thailand 🇹🇭 

[Anonymous]

My S6 Edge just upgraded this evening, and one thing that I've noticed is that the default SMS messenger app no longer auto converts SMS to MMS instead you get the rather banal 'Maximum Number of Characters Reached',

Also long text messages that are recieved have a 'View All' option which means I cant see the entire message and have to keep switching between typing a reply and the original received message.

Thats aside from the major issue of battery drain and it getting quite hot.

One thing that does stand out is that the SMS Messenger app on the S8 is perfectly ok.

Any ideas how to fix the above issues and get back to the auto convert SMS to MMS?