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Two-year-old Nexus 4 issue status changed to obsolete

141 points by reedlaw 12y ago

reedlaw 12y ago
This is an issue that has affected my Nexus 4 since I purchased it two years ago. It makes nearly all third-party voice apps unusable. I have not been able use SIP dialers or Skype without the other side hearing echoes. I even considered buying the Nexus 5 just to resolve this issue, but I'm not sure if there are any fatal flaws affecting that phone which won't be resolved either.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  CSipSimple's pretty bad on the 5, but Hangouts works okay as long as you don't enable OK Google Everywhere. I doubt the camera-reboot issue on the 4 will ever get fixed, either.
  - matt_heimer 12y ago
    Camera-reboot issue for anybody curious https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113
    - kawsper 12y ago
      That is one sad thread. Very embarrassing for Google that they don't seem able to respond and to resolve such issues.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  my nexus 4 voice craps out for random reasons. I have to factory reset my phone every 2-3 days. I've even tried building my own rom, examining logcat to no avail, using Cyanogenmod, using Paranoid Android doesn't matter voice cuts out at seemingly random intervals. Damn you LG
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - winter_blue 12y ago
    Having to factory reset every 2-3 days sounds really terrible. You should just get another phone (or go over to the "dark side" of "everything-just-works" iPhones :P).
  - marvel_boy 12y ago
    Same here. Finally I trash the crap Nexus and bought a second hand iPhone4 (2010). Works like a charm.
  - pja 12y ago
    There's a bug in the system somewhere breaking voice calls altogether on the Nexus 4 which is apparently triggered by a recent change to Google Play Services. Mostly the people affected are using third party ROMs (CyanogenMod et al), but I believe it's also affecting some stock devices. Might be the same problem? Right now it's a choice between having a working phone with only partially functioning Google Apps or working Google Apps with the phone not being, well, a phone. Hopefully the CM crowd will be able to come up with a bugfix / workaround of some sort that doesn't involve stopping half the Google Apps from working properly. (CM bug: https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-5728 https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-5728 )
    - pakled_engineer 12y ago
      Android 5.0.1 seems to have fixed the problem, using factory image will build my own image later to test again
vidoc 12y ago
Over the last 3 years, I bought three 'google edition' devices (nexus 10, galaxy nexus, htc one m7) and I am less than impressed. I haven't experienced faster updates, and while I appreciate to run the vanilla android. Regressions and overall poor software quality have been my experience with their devices. They must be outsourcing large parts of the software they ship on their devices because I'm absolutely stunned things like this go through QA. Here's the best-of: - The responsiveness of the nexus 10 tablet has been enjoying enormous spikes since day 1. - Running into all sorts of problems with 'Mail app' and now 'Gmail app' using a third-party imap server. Lots of message with an HTML body or attachements are displayed blank. - Skype, hangout, SIP, have been a disaster with all those devices. Sometimes due to horrible software (Skype), sometimes due to the hardware/OS (hangout with htc). - Finally, lollipop is the freebsd 5.0 of android
- barbs 12y ago
  "Finally, lollipop is the freebsd 5.0 of android" What do you mean by this, exactly?
  - jmartinpetersen 12y ago
    As I remember FreeBSD 5.0 (and 5.1 and 5.2 for that matter) were always labelled -RELEASE (and not -STABLE, that didn't happen until 5.3). It was a chicken and egg kind of problem, where a lot of stuff in the new kernel was rewritten/redone, among other things to get rid of the GIANT lock and enable SMP support in the kernel. There was also a new threading implementation, a new I/O block layer and all sorts of stuff that needed more exposure.
  - vidoc 12y ago
    What I mean by this - out of frustration because I want to love this new release - is that the 5.x release of android, on the couple of devices I upgraded is, buggier, laggier, and less stable than version 4.x. In terms of usability, I also noticed that they removed the ability to only display contacts that have a phone number: I can live with that but I can tell you my dad was furious about this. Another minor annoyance is that switching to a different WIFI network seemingly requires more taps than before. I've owned a few IOS devices in the past - an OS I am not a big fan of - but I am disappointed that Google routinely overlooks those kind of details that Apple certainly wouldn't.
Morcane 12y ago
This is why I don't buy Android equipment or invest time in Google technology.
stinos 12y ago
It's sad no fix was released, but I find it equally sad it was marked obsolete after just 2 years. Obsolete basically means: we don't care about this device anymore, buy a new one instead. In a world where striving for lower environmental impact should become core business of every company and individual because sustaining the current lifestyle of many is going to severely damage the planet in one way or another, this is not the kind of sign major companies (and they pretty much all do it in the mobile business) should send into the world. For a lot of people these companies are half gods, and what they do shall be believed in, it becomes part of their education. Making people believe buying devices and throwing them away after a just year or two is standard isn't exactly noble. Yeah yeah I know money is the driving factor behind companies, but that doesn't mean it cannot be combined with sending a 'greener' message into the world.
- furrysheep 12y ago
  Google's reputation for poor support and discontinuing things seems quite apt...
- aragot 12y ago
  A good reason is the zero-bug policy. In my previous company, we introduced this policy to limit the expansion of the backlog. Project Managers have to close issues that they don't actually plan to tackle, which is a very difficult exercise in honesty and transparency, but which provides customers with visibility.
  - NotOscarWilde 12y ago
    > Project Managers have to close issues that they don't actually plan to tackle, which is a very difficult exercise in honesty and transparency I understand honesty, but I don't see how closing bugs makes it more transparent for the customers/users. Suppose there is such a bug you do not plan to fix. As a user, I can appreciate you stating that, but that does not mean the bug ceases to exist and should be hidden from the users' eyes. A few years ago, there were dozens of little bugs in GNU/Linux that appeared only for some people some of the time. NVIDIA driver issues, keyboard backlight support, and so on. These were also of the kind where we couldn't expect an official fix, but still there was a Ubuntu wiki, Debian wiki, Arch wiki, Gentoo wiki and many other places where you could find a workaround for your specific bug. To me, allowing "the community" to help itself on bugs that you do not plan to fix helps transparency much more than hiding your bug by setting it to "obsolete". It may not apply well to your particular company, but for Google's Android, a Linux distribution, it would be ideal.
captainmuon 12y ago
My Nexus 4 started to have an issue where using the camera may crash the phone... but only in third-party apps, never in the native camera app. I can't find the link to the bug report right now, but the last I checked Google didn't acknowledge the bug despite dozens or hundreds of reports. Most irritating that this apparently started with a certain update (4.2.2?), and that the problem seems to be in the closed-source blobs, so you can't fix it yourself (I haven't checked, but that's what I read). The Nexus 4 has another stupid defect, it has no USB OTG support, that is the ability to use it as a USB host and plug in USB devices. If you look at the kernel source, Google actually removed support just before shipping. The stated reason was that since the USB port doubles as HDMI (Slimport), you can't get 5V out of it. I managed to patch the kernel, and if you use a Y cable (taking 5V from somewhere else), it indeed works. But the interesting thing is, the way it is wired you can actually get 5V out of the slimport itself, IIRC. You just have to set a bit in the kernel. I managed to get it halfway running, but I stopped working on it because I didn't have enough experience and time to give it a polished interface. I was also afraid that I was violating the USB spec and might fry my phone or a USB device :-). In the end I decided that it was just not worth it and I wanted to spend my spare time on other things in my life. But it makes you wonder, were there really technical reasons, or was it either 1) "stop trying to make that work, we got to get the Nexus 5 out next year!" or 2) "stop trying to make that work, we'd like to sell phones with larger memory (that people won't buy if they can just plug in a pen drive) / our partners would like to sell phones with larger memory / a evil cabal decided that it should be hard to put pirated .mp3 and .mkv on a phone, so we must make it as cumbersome as possible to get files onto there (MTP anybody?)" Not saying that's what happened, but Googles behavior (intransparency and quickly obsoleting even there flagship devices) erodes trust, and Google was one of the last companies you could have trusted a bit.
- verytrivial 12y ago
  Your experience and puzzlement regarding the Nexus 4 is basically identical to mine.
simonh 12y ago
I just don't get how Google keeps getting positive press for its Nexus line. The issues with the early devices were written off as teething trouble, but Google has been developing Nexus devices for 5 years now and still they frequently have fundamental technical flaws and go unsupported after just a couple of years, if that in some cases. I honestly don't know what the benefit of getting a Nexus device is anymore. To those people claiming all Apple does is assemble components and throw out overpriced crap and the iPhone is essentially just a marketing exercise, this is what it looks like when that's actually true.
- nly 12y ago
  Reasons I bought (and still use as my daily driver) a Nexus 4: * It was the phone most likely to get Android updates quickly. * The bootloader was unlockable. * It was extremely good value (compared to other phones available at the time) I agree 100% that these benefits are gone or no longer exclusive to the Nexus line. Frankly my next phone I'll just see what is both good value and well supported by Cyanogen.
- eitally 12y ago
  The upside to Nexus is that it's pure Android. These days, the downside is that it's pure Android and essentially unsupported by the vendor. The incentive to purchase Nexus or GPE devices was a lot greater pre-KitKat, but now that a lot of stuff has been abstracted away from the core and into Google Play Services & associated apps, being on the absolute latest core isn't often "necessary". The elephant in the room is that the vendor overlays (Touchwiz, Sense, etc) are so unique that switching device brands can be very disorienting, even to find straightforward settings and do simple things. I have quite a bit of experience with HTC's Sense, but my father just purchased an LG G3 (at my suggestion) and I had a heck of a time just navigating to and through the settings screens trying to find something easy (how to change the screen timeout). I am still happy with my GPE HTC One M8 and see 0 need to upgrade devices any time soon, but the next time I do it will probably be to either a Moto or Sony, both of which are minimally skinned, or something like a OnePlus running an alternative ROM.
- Kequc 12y ago
  HTC Samsung LG and Motorola were the manufacturers of the Nexus line not Google. I bought one of the first Nexus 4's on the market and it still works, I've had very few issues with it. My mother has one, she's had very few issues with it. She also has a Nexus 10 which I'm somewhat jealous of because it's an absolutely phenomenal device she uses it non stop. If you want an Apple device get an Apple device personally I don't like them because I think the OS has been behind for quite a while. I buy Nexus devices because they are being sold as hardware without carrier lock or bloatware, as all phones should be.
colig 12y ago
Ever since updating to Lollipop, my Nexus 4 has had sudden restarts a few times a week. It's a very disappointing reduction in quality which makes me question whether to go Android for my next device. If Google can't support its own hardware reliably then I don't see why anyone else should put their trust in it.
alsutton010203 12y ago
The bug tracker at https://code.google.com/p/android/ https://code.google.com/p/android/ is for AOSP issues. Anything to do with a device specific issue should be reported to the OEM and not logged in that bug tracker. The reason that this hadn't been closed before is probably the lack of resources to cope with the number of non-AOSP bugs reported in that tracker. The more critical issues will ripple up from OEMs to Google if necessary, and that is unlikely to happen via the community focused AOSP bug tracker you've linked to.
- aroch 12y ago
  The N4 was explicitly Google branded hardware with Google providing the hardware support (Google handled RMAs, component replacement, etc). It is Google's responsibility to support phones they sell as Google supported devices. It is no different than when you buy a car. You go to a Ford dealership, they sell you a car, its their responsibility to repair and maintain your car during the agreed upon warranty period. You wouldn't tell someone to "file a ticket" with Ford instead of calling their dealer, would you?
  - alsutton010203 12y ago
    Exactly; You shouldn't file a ticket in this system for specific consumer devices. It's not the right place for those kind of issues, you should find the appropriate consumer support route.
    - aroch 12y ago
      You've misinterpreted me. The AOSP bug tracker is exactly the right place to file bug reports for Google sold devices. Google takes on the responsibility of supporting those devices, hardware and all.
amorphid 12y ago
My Nexus 4 was pretty unstable when it got updated to Lollipop. I have one specific memory of trying to use navigate from Point A to Point B on my first day of work at a new job, only to have Google Maps crash about every 3 minutes. It seems to have gotten better with recent updates. At least Google Maps isn't crashing anymore.
deleted 12y ago
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alkimie2 12y ago
As a pretty happy galaxy nexus owner (that I just passed to my teenaged son), I've been pretty disappointed with the price point and apparent lack of commitment to the google phone line. As a consequence I've just bought OnePlus Ones for myself and my family based on their apparent commitment to cyanogen as native-from-the-factory load and a much better price point than the Google 6. It's a bit sad to see Google move away from the Nexus phones as a touchstone for value and 'pure' android, but good to see others (e.g., OnePlus) filling the ecological niche. It will be interesting to see if OnePlus continues to fill this niche or evolves away from it.
- shekhar101 12y ago
  Moto is doing a fine job with this. Guaranteed next update and pure Android experience. All this even on cheaper phones. I am also a part of their 'Soak Test' program. Got to say, they are doing a really good job!
  - jsnell 12y ago
    The Moto G is roughly as useful as a brick at this point. Some update they pushed last summer broke the memory management, such that apps would be randomly killed and immediately restarted even with relatively huge amounts of free memory. This is a very widespread issue with hundreds of complaints on Motorola's support forum, and it's just not getting fixed. So no. Motorola are not doing a fine job with this. Just a shame that they're still able to coast by on the good reviews, from before they broke the otherwise excellent phone.
    - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
      Yes. This is very annoying. Apparently this is fixed in 5.0.1 according to the few Gen2 Moto G users who got the Lollipop update. Hopefully it will deployed to everyone else sometime this month. It would seem that the problem is due to overly aggressive memory management that was never properly adjusted for 1GiB RAM. One would hope that the popularity of the G and other small memory Android devices would help push for more efficient memory usage rather than requiring 2GiB+ for a decent experience. For starters, it would be nice if more of the core system was implemented in native code (ART doesn't count).
Zigurd 12y ago
I don't want to make excuses on behalf of Google and LG, but I wouldn't expect this kind of bug to be fixed in any phone, even a Nexus phone that's supposed to have up to date OS releases. Acoustic echo cancellation is subject to hardware limitations and firmware licensing decisions taken at the production planning stage. That puts it a step or three beyond simpler prioritization decisions. So why didn't Google close this earlier? The media frameworks in Android have changed enough that, maybe, workarounds or fixes could have emerged as new media capabilities were added. Google has lately gone on a tear of bug list clean-up. When you expose your bug list to end users you'll get a lot of questioning regarding why this or that bug can't be fixed. This one is particularly easy to defend.
d2p 12y ago
I've starred a load of Android bugs in that tracker; and over the last few weeks, loads of them (many tens) have been flagged Obsolete. Many of them are absolutely not obsolete; they're as relevant in 5.0 as they were when they were raised. It's great that they're cleaning up the issue tracker as if they might actually use it (or maybe it's preperation to move to GitHub, as many other Google projects have been), but it sucks that they're just blanked fobbing off a load of relevant cases :(
- crististm 12y ago
  No, they don't clean anything. For me, this is just enterprise in action. They send a clear message that any free work that you did for them will be used as they see fit. That includes sending it to the trash. So much for 'community'. When it's a company involved, the sense of participation is dissipated by the monetary interests of the shareholders (which you are not one of). On their defence, who do you think will check any pending fixes for those bugs? Do you take ownership on that? They sure don't. And they are busy with the next release anyway. Why bother with your two year old phone?
mbloom1915 12y ago
For me, buying a Nexus 4 when it was first released meant there were multiple tradeoffs in comparison to other smart phones on the market. The largest was lack of support if anything went wrong with it in return for pure android experience with frequent updates. There were certainly plenty of hardware and software issues as the new device was naturally buggy and acted up upon app or software updates. At the end of the day, tradeoffs are part of the android experience I bought into and I wouldn't go back in time and buy any other phone. Live with the nexus consequences or don't buy it, with technology progressing so quickly in the mobile space every two years you should probably be buying a new device if you are android advocate.
josteink 12y ago
It would be interesting to know if these bugs are in core Android or in the Nexus 4 device-tree. To me it sounds like they could potentially be fixed in third-party forks like Cyanogenmod where Google isn't the only party deciding if a bug gets fixed or not. Or maybe some already are fixed? Any Nexus 4 owners here willing shed some light on this?
apayan 12y ago
tldr; this was fixed. It just didn't get marked as fixed by Google. I was following this issue on the Nexus 4 (comment #20 of OP[1]), way back when and even filed a more detailed follow up issue [2]. In short, the APIs needed for echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain adjustment weren't making use of the Nexus 4 hardware (lack of driver, missing code, I don't know why). However, the issue was fixed in the Android 4.3 OTA update. I can verify this because at the time I was working on a VoIP app and my Nexus 4 was my primary phone and it was driving me mad. But in all fairness, it was fixed by Google. [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41626#c20 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41626#c20 [2] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=42978 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=42978

141 points by reedlaw 12y ago

This is an issue that has affected my Nexus 4 since I purchased it two years ago. It makes nearly all third-party voice apps unusable. I have not been able use SIP dialers or Skype without the other side hearing echoes. I even considered buying the Nexus 5 just to resolve this issue, but I'm not sure if there are any fatal flaws affecting that phone which won't be resolved either.

deleted 12y ago
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voltagex_ 12y ago
CSipSimple's pretty bad on the 5, but Hangouts works okay as long as you don't enable OK Google Everywhere. I doubt the camera-reboot issue on the 4 will ever get fixed, either.
- matt_heimer 12y ago
  Camera-reboot issue for anybody curious https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=67113
  - kawsper 12y ago
    That is one sad thread. Very embarrassing for Google that they don't seem able to respond and to resolve such issues.
pakled_engineer 12y ago
my nexus 4 voice craps out for random reasons. I have to factory reset my phone every 2-3 days. I've even tried building my own rom, examining logcat to no avail, using Cyanogenmod, using Paranoid Android doesn't matter voice cuts out at seemingly random intervals. Damn you LG
- deleted 12y ago
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- winter_blue 12y ago
  Having to factory reset every 2-3 days sounds really terrible. You should just get another phone (or go over to the "dark side" of "everything-just-works" iPhones :P).
- marvel_boy 12y ago
  Same here. Finally I trash the crap Nexus and bought a second hand iPhone4 (2010). Works like a charm.
- pja 12y ago
  There's a bug in the system somewhere breaking voice calls altogether on the Nexus 4 which is apparently triggered by a recent change to Google Play Services. Mostly the people affected are using third party ROMs (CyanogenMod et al), but I believe it's also affecting some stock devices. Might be the same problem? Right now it's a choice between having a working phone with only partially functioning Google Apps or working Google Apps with the phone not being, well, a phone. Hopefully the CM crowd will be able to come up with a bugfix / workaround of some sort that doesn't involve stopping half the Google Apps from working properly. (CM bug: https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-5728 https://jira.cyanogenmod.org/browse/CYAN-5728 )
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    Android 5.0.1 seems to have fixed the problem, using factory image will build my own image later to test again

vidoc 12y ago

Over the last 3 years, I bought three 'google edition' devices (nexus 10, galaxy nexus, htc one m7) and I am less than impressed. I haven't experienced faster updates, and while I appreciate to run the vanilla android. Regressions and overall poor software quality have been my experience with their devices. They must be outsourcing large parts of the software they ship on their devices because I'm absolutely stunned things like this go through QA. Here's the best-of: - The responsiveness of the nexus 10 tablet has been enjoying enormous spikes since day 1. - Running into all sorts of problems with 'Mail app' and now 'Gmail app' using a third-party imap server. Lots of message with an HTML body or attachements are displayed blank. - Skype, hangout, SIP, have been a disaster with all those devices. Sometimes due to horrible software (Skype), sometimes due to the hardware/OS (hangout with htc). - Finally, lollipop is the freebsd 5.0 of android

barbs 12y ago
"Finally, lollipop is the freebsd 5.0 of android" What do you mean by this, exactly?
- jmartinpetersen 12y ago
  As I remember FreeBSD 5.0 (and 5.1 and 5.2 for that matter) were always labelled -RELEASE (and not -STABLE, that didn't happen until 5.3). It was a chicken and egg kind of problem, where a lot of stuff in the new kernel was rewritten/redone, among other things to get rid of the GIANT lock and enable SMP support in the kernel. There was also a new threading implementation, a new I/O block layer and all sorts of stuff that needed more exposure.
- vidoc 12y ago
  What I mean by this - out of frustration because I want to love this new release - is that the 5.x release of android, on the couple of devices I upgraded is, buggier, laggier, and less stable than version 4.x. In terms of usability, I also noticed that they removed the ability to only display contacts that have a phone number: I can live with that but I can tell you my dad was furious about this. Another minor annoyance is that switching to a different WIFI network seemingly requires more taps than before. I've owned a few IOS devices in the past - an OS I am not a big fan of - but I am disappointed that Google routinely overlooks those kind of details that Apple certainly wouldn't.

Morcane 12y ago

This is why I don't buy Android equipment or invest time in Google technology.

stinos 12y ago

It's sad no fix was released, but I find it equally sad it was marked obsolete after just 2 years. Obsolete basically means: we don't care about this device anymore, buy a new one instead. In a world where striving for lower environmental impact should become core business of every company and individual because sustaining the current lifestyle of many is going to severely damage the planet in one way or another, this is not the kind of sign major companies (and they pretty much all do it in the mobile business) should send into the world. For a lot of people these companies are half gods, and what they do shall be believed in, it becomes part of their education. Making people believe buying devices and throwing them away after a just year or two is standard isn't exactly noble. Yeah yeah I know money is the driving factor behind companies, but that doesn't mean it cannot be combined with sending a 'greener' message into the world.

furrysheep 12y ago
Google's reputation for poor support and discontinuing things seems quite apt...
aragot 12y ago
A good reason is the zero-bug policy. In my previous company, we introduced this policy to limit the expansion of the backlog. Project Managers have to close issues that they don't actually plan to tackle, which is a very difficult exercise in honesty and transparency, but which provides customers with visibility.
- NotOscarWilde 12y ago
  > Project Managers have to close issues that they don't actually plan to tackle, which is a very difficult exercise in honesty and transparency I understand honesty, but I don't see how closing bugs makes it more transparent for the customers/users. Suppose there is such a bug you do not plan to fix. As a user, I can appreciate you stating that, but that does not mean the bug ceases to exist and should be hidden from the users' eyes. A few years ago, there were dozens of little bugs in GNU/Linux that appeared only for some people some of the time. NVIDIA driver issues, keyboard backlight support, and so on. These were also of the kind where we couldn't expect an official fix, but still there was a Ubuntu wiki, Debian wiki, Arch wiki, Gentoo wiki and many other places where you could find a workaround for your specific bug. To me, allowing "the community" to help itself on bugs that you do not plan to fix helps transparency much more than hiding your bug by setting it to "obsolete". It may not apply well to your particular company, but for Google's Android, a Linux distribution, it would be ideal.

captainmuon 12y ago

My Nexus 4 started to have an issue where using the camera may crash the phone... but only in third-party apps, never in the native camera app. I can't find the link to the bug report right now, but the last I checked Google didn't acknowledge the bug despite dozens or hundreds of reports. Most irritating that this apparently started with a certain update (4.2.2?), and that the problem seems to be in the closed-source blobs, so you can't fix it yourself (I haven't checked, but that's what I read). The Nexus 4 has another stupid defect, it has no USB OTG support, that is the ability to use it as a USB host and plug in USB devices. If you look at the kernel source, Google actually removed support just before shipping. The stated reason was that since the USB port doubles as HDMI (Slimport), you can't get 5V out of it. I managed to patch the kernel, and if you use a Y cable (taking 5V from somewhere else), it indeed works. But the interesting thing is, the way it is wired you can actually get 5V out of the slimport itself, IIRC. You just have to set a bit in the kernel. I managed to get it halfway running, but I stopped working on it because I didn't have enough experience and time to give it a polished interface. I was also afraid that I was violating the USB spec and might fry my phone or a USB device :-). In the end I decided that it was just not worth it and I wanted to spend my spare time on other things in my life. But it makes you wonder, were there really technical reasons, or was it either 1) "stop trying to make that work, we got to get the Nexus 5 out next year!" or 2) "stop trying to make that work, we'd like to sell phones with larger memory (that people won't buy if they can just plug in a pen drive) / our partners would like to sell phones with larger memory / a evil cabal decided that it should be hard to put pirated .mp3 and .mkv on a phone, so we must make it as cumbersome as possible to get files onto there (MTP anybody?)" Not saying that's what happened, but Googles behavior (intransparency and quickly obsoleting even there flagship devices) erodes trust, and Google was one of the last companies you could have trusted a bit.

verytrivial 12y ago
Your experience and puzzlement regarding the Nexus 4 is basically identical to mine.

simonh 12y ago

I just don't get how Google keeps getting positive press for its Nexus line. The issues with the early devices were written off as teething trouble, but Google has been developing Nexus devices for 5 years now and still they frequently have fundamental technical flaws and go unsupported after just a couple of years, if that in some cases. I honestly don't know what the benefit of getting a Nexus device is anymore. To those people claiming all Apple does is assemble components and throw out overpriced crap and the iPhone is essentially just a marketing exercise, this is what it looks like when that's actually true.

nly 12y ago
Reasons I bought (and still use as my daily driver) a Nexus 4: * It was the phone most likely to get Android updates quickly. * The bootloader was unlockable. * It was extremely good value (compared to other phones available at the time) I agree 100% that these benefits are gone or no longer exclusive to the Nexus line. Frankly my next phone I'll just see what is both good value and well supported by Cyanogen.
eitally 12y ago
The upside to Nexus is that it's pure Android. These days, the downside is that it's pure Android and essentially unsupported by the vendor. The incentive to purchase Nexus or GPE devices was a lot greater pre-KitKat, but now that a lot of stuff has been abstracted away from the core and into Google Play Services & associated apps, being on the absolute latest core isn't often "necessary". The elephant in the room is that the vendor overlays (Touchwiz, Sense, etc) are so unique that switching device brands can be very disorienting, even to find straightforward settings and do simple things. I have quite a bit of experience with HTC's Sense, but my father just purchased an LG G3 (at my suggestion) and I had a heck of a time just navigating to and through the settings screens trying to find something easy (how to change the screen timeout). I am still happy with my GPE HTC One M8 and see 0 need to upgrade devices any time soon, but the next time I do it will probably be to either a Moto or Sony, both of which are minimally skinned, or something like a OnePlus running an alternative ROM.
Kequc 12y ago
HTC Samsung LG and Motorola were the manufacturers of the Nexus line not Google. I bought one of the first Nexus 4's on the market and it still works, I've had very few issues with it. My mother has one, she's had very few issues with it. She also has a Nexus 10 which I'm somewhat jealous of because it's an absolutely phenomenal device she uses it non stop. If you want an Apple device get an Apple device personally I don't like them because I think the OS has been behind for quite a while. I buy Nexus devices because they are being sold as hardware without carrier lock or bloatware, as all phones should be.

colig 12y ago

Ever since updating to Lollipop, my Nexus 4 has had sudden restarts a few times a week. It's a very disappointing reduction in quality which makes me question whether to go Android for my next device. If Google can't support its own hardware reliably then I don't see why anyone else should put their trust in it.

alsutton010203 12y ago

The bug tracker at https://code.google.com/p/android/ https://code.google.com/p/android/ is for AOSP issues. Anything to do with a device specific issue should be reported to the OEM and not logged in that bug tracker. The reason that this hadn't been closed before is probably the lack of resources to cope with the number of non-AOSP bugs reported in that tracker. The more critical issues will ripple up from OEMs to Google if necessary, and that is unlikely to happen via the community focused AOSP bug tracker you've linked to.

aroch 12y ago
The N4 was explicitly Google branded hardware with Google providing the hardware support (Google handled RMAs, component replacement, etc). It is Google's responsibility to support phones they sell as Google supported devices. It is no different than when you buy a car. You go to a Ford dealership, they sell you a car, its their responsibility to repair and maintain your car during the agreed upon warranty period. You wouldn't tell someone to "file a ticket" with Ford instead of calling their dealer, would you?
- alsutton010203 12y ago
  Exactly; You shouldn't file a ticket in this system for specific consumer devices. It's not the right place for those kind of issues, you should find the appropriate consumer support route.
  - aroch 12y ago
    You've misinterpreted me. The AOSP bug tracker is exactly the right place to file bug reports for Google sold devices. Google takes on the responsibility of supporting those devices, hardware and all.

amorphid 12y ago

My Nexus 4 was pretty unstable when it got updated to Lollipop. I have one specific memory of trying to use navigate from Point A to Point B on my first day of work at a new job, only to have Google Maps crash about every 3 minutes. It seems to have gotten better with recent updates. At least Google Maps isn't crashing anymore.

deleted 12y ago

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alkimie2 12y ago

As a pretty happy galaxy nexus owner (that I just passed to my teenaged son), I've been pretty disappointed with the price point and apparent lack of commitment to the google phone line. As a consequence I've just bought OnePlus Ones for myself and my family based on their apparent commitment to cyanogen as native-from-the-factory load and a much better price point than the Google 6. It's a bit sad to see Google move away from the Nexus phones as a touchstone for value and 'pure' android, but good to see others (e.g., OnePlus) filling the ecological niche. It will be interesting to see if OnePlus continues to fill this niche or evolves away from it.

shekhar101 12y ago
Moto is doing a fine job with this. Guaranteed next update and pure Android experience. All this even on cheaper phones. I am also a part of their 'Soak Test' program. Got to say, they are doing a really good job!
- jsnell 12y ago
  The Moto G is roughly as useful as a brick at this point. Some update they pushed last summer broke the memory management, such that apps would be randomly killed and immediately restarted even with relatively huge amounts of free memory. This is a very widespread issue with hundreds of complaints on Motorola's support forum, and it's just not getting fixed. So no. Motorola are not doing a fine job with this. Just a shame that they're still able to coast by on the good reviews, from before they broke the otherwise excellent phone.
  - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
    Yes. This is very annoying. Apparently this is fixed in 5.0.1 according to the few Gen2 Moto G users who got the Lollipop update. Hopefully it will deployed to everyone else sometime this month. It would seem that the problem is due to overly aggressive memory management that was never properly adjusted for 1GiB RAM. One would hope that the popularity of the G and other small memory Android devices would help push for more efficient memory usage rather than requiring 2GiB+ for a decent experience. For starters, it would be nice if more of the core system was implemented in native code (ART doesn't count).

Zigurd 12y ago

I don't want to make excuses on behalf of Google and LG, but I wouldn't expect this kind of bug to be fixed in any phone, even a Nexus phone that's supposed to have up to date OS releases. Acoustic echo cancellation is subject to hardware limitations and firmware licensing decisions taken at the production planning stage. That puts it a step or three beyond simpler prioritization decisions. So why didn't Google close this earlier? The media frameworks in Android have changed enough that, maybe, workarounds or fixes could have emerged as new media capabilities were added. Google has lately gone on a tear of bug list clean-up. When you expose your bug list to end users you'll get a lot of questioning regarding why this or that bug can't be fixed. This one is particularly easy to defend.

d2p 12y ago

I've starred a load of Android bugs in that tracker; and over the last few weeks, loads of them (many tens) have been flagged Obsolete. Many of them are absolutely not obsolete; they're as relevant in 5.0 as they were when they were raised. It's great that they're cleaning up the issue tracker as if they might actually use it (or maybe it's preperation to move to GitHub, as many other Google projects have been), but it sucks that they're just blanked fobbing off a load of relevant cases :(

crististm 12y ago
No, they don't clean anything. For me, this is just enterprise in action. They send a clear message that any free work that you did for them will be used as they see fit. That includes sending it to the trash. So much for 'community'. When it's a company involved, the sense of participation is dissipated by the monetary interests of the shareholders (which you are not one of). On their defence, who do you think will check any pending fixes for those bugs? Do you take ownership on that? They sure don't. And they are busy with the next release anyway. Why bother with your two year old phone?

mbloom1915 12y ago

For me, buying a Nexus 4 when it was first released meant there were multiple tradeoffs in comparison to other smart phones on the market. The largest was lack of support if anything went wrong with it in return for pure android experience with frequent updates. There were certainly plenty of hardware and software issues as the new device was naturally buggy and acted up upon app or software updates. At the end of the day, tradeoffs are part of the android experience I bought into and I wouldn't go back in time and buy any other phone. Live with the nexus consequences or don't buy it, with technology progressing so quickly in the mobile space every two years you should probably be buying a new device if you are android advocate.

josteink 12y ago

It would be interesting to know if these bugs are in core Android or in the Nexus 4 device-tree. To me it sounds like they could potentially be fixed in third-party forks like Cyanogenmod where Google isn't the only party deciding if a bug gets fixed or not. Or maybe some already are fixed? Any Nexus 4 owners here willing shed some light on this?

apayan 12y ago

tldr; this was fixed. It just didn't get marked as fixed by Google. I was following this issue on the Nexus 4 (comment #20 of OP[1]), way back when and even filed a more detailed follow up issue [2]. In short, the APIs needed for echo cancellation, noise suppression and automatic gain adjustment weren't making use of the Nexus 4 hardware (lack of driver, missing code, I don't know why). However, the issue was fixed in the Android 4.3 OTA update. I can verify this because at the time I was working on a VoIP app and my Nexus 4 was my primary phone and it was driving me mad. But in all fairness, it was fixed by Google. [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41626#c20 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41626#c20 [2] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=42978 https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=42978