About phone updates

[derpylt]

Hello!

 

So I've a question I heard from someone and want to ask if it's true.

I've had my Samsung G S4 for two years now and I literally never updated my phone, and it worked perfectly, and the battery lasted as well. But as all the updates came, I decided to upgrade to a newer version. I instantly noticed that the phone is more laggy and the battery drains super fast. Though I have only used 20% of my phones storage so I don't understand.

 

So my friend told me that it's bloatware in the official update. 

"Once sellers release new phones, they fill their updates with a bunch of background softwares to make our device laggy, in this way more users want to buy new phones"

 

Is this really true? And if so, how can I avoid it when I am going to buy Samsung G S7.

 

Thank you,

derpylt

[y_unit265]

It may very well be true. If it is though, I'll tell you right now that there will be no company that is going to openly admit that it does so. A way of prevention would be to not update. I've been using a samsung galaxy Y for 6 years now. I just don't do anything with it. Apart from whatsapp. I don't even have 3/4g networking as I'm a prepaid user.

[vanished]

You can always expect a newer OS to be a little more demanding since they're always adding new stuff, but this is an interesting and long-running conspiracy.  I honestly don't know if it's true or not, but afaik android is open source so surely if they were just adding things to intentionally ruin old devices, someone would have noticed by now...

[derpylt]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You can always expect a newer OS to be a little more demanding since they're always adding new stuff, but this is an interesting and long-running conspiracy.  I honestly don't know if it's true or not, but afaik android is open source so surely if they were just adding things to intentionally ruin old devices, someone would have noticed by now...

Well many phones today are as good as computers few years ago, so it shouldn't just suddenly go laggy. Maybe my phone is just getting old and stuff, though I take care of it. 

Is it possible to update phones from non-official sites? 

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, derpylt said:

Well many phones today are as good as computers few years ago, so it shouldn't just suddenly go laggy. Maybe my phone is just getting old and stuff, though I take care of it. 

Is it possible to update phones from non-official sites? 

Yes, you can flash a custom rom like cyanogen, and in doing so get pretty much any version ever, and also many people claim they are faster than stock even when using the same version.

[Apathetik]

3 minutes ago, derpylt said:

Well many phones today are as good as computers few years ago, so it shouldn't just suddenly go laggy. Maybe my phone is just getting old and stuff, though I take care of it. 

Is it possible to update phones from non-official sites? 

It's often too involved of a process for most people to want to bother with. But it's always good practice to figure out what all is running on any device you're using. So you can easily identify new things. 

 

You may not be able to compare what's running on your phone now, vs what was running on it before you updated. But I'd highly recommend getting a task manager and potentially an app locker (I use ES Task Manager and App Locker) to kill unwanted processes, and lock apps from running. 

 

As far as non-official updates go. You can flash custom roms which can range anywhere from bare bones. To complete overhaul. This can sometimes get around heavily bloated manufacturer specific issues. But is also something I wouldn't necessarily recommend to someone who isn't fully prepared to take the time needed to understand, then properly flash a phone.

[sunlight10f]

Not sure if it's been said yet but with every major version upgrade (ie. 4.* -> 5.*) a factory reset is recommended to avoid battery drains and such.

 

One could also disable preinstalled apps (that can be disabled) under application manager. Use google for which apps do what and which are safe to disable. Some are nobrainers though, for example google+ if you're not using it and hangouts, etc.

 

Task manager is generally a bad idea unless you know exactly what you're doing. Most apps can be closed from the recent apps menu, just wipe them from there. Depending on apps that should usually be enough.

[Mew]

It's 100% not true because as more features and capabilities get tacked on, it becomes much harder to run on older hardware, especially with how much each generation of phone performance increases.