Goodbye dear Chrome (and CM!)

I have two nexus devices, Nexus 4 phone and Nexus 7 tablet (first version.)  Both have been upgraded to Lollipop.  While Nexus 4 has been working very well, Nexus 7 has been experiencing terrible problems.  I experimented a lot and concluded that Chrome, the Google browser, is at the root of the problem.  No fiddling with settings seemed to provide any relief.  I started relying more on my I-pad and Nexus 7 started getting discarded for most uses.

Today I disabled Chrome on Nexus 7.  I have installed UC browser in its place.  It is a fantastic experience.  Life and vigor have returned to the Nexus 7 tablet.  Browser freezing and crashing, becoming unresponsive to scrolling motions are all things of the past!

I was so impressed with UC browser that I decided to replace Clean Master too with the cleaner offered by the developer of UC browser.  It is called UClean and has none of the clutter and overload of Clean Master.

I hope the good user experience will last.  In the meantime I do hope that Google will take notice and do something to rectify the situation instead of turning a blind eye to poor Nexus 7.

Lollipop: Familiarity Induces Confidence to Waive Security

I recall an evening walk with my grandson, Arnav.  We turned into an alley that was new for him.  He immediately tightened his grip on my hand and said, "I don't like going too far away from home."  I picked him up and held him close to my chest.  He looked intently at my face and relaxed.  Sometimes I drive him to unknown places in the old car retained by my son.  He never becomes apprehensive as long as he is in the car.  He has known this car since his birth.  The familiarity breeds confidence in him.

Security in Lollipop, Android's latest version, seems to be modeled after Arnav. It implements security through password / patterns and at the same time tells the system to have confidence when it finds itself in a familiar place or when it sees a familiar face or when it is close to a familiar device.  In these cases it unlocks itself.  If none of the reassuring factors are present, it asks for the password or the pattern.

This confidence based security is implemented through Smart Lock.  It is called smart because it unlocks the system when having confidence in the owner, place or connected devices.  If the confidence is lacking the system can only be unlocked through password / pattern.  Smart Lock is called a Trust Agent that tells the system about what to trust.  The design suggests that other trust agents may also be added later on.

I have experimented with all the three Smart Locks (connected device, place and face.). Face based unlocking doesn't work every time.  This is only as expected.  Place based unlocking is working well.  Documentation says the device remains unlocked within 80 meters of the defined place.

Smart unlocking in the presence of a recognized Bluetooth device may prove a weakness if both the devices get stolen together!

Needless to add that Smart Lock can be activated only if a password or pattern is active.  Unless there is a lock there is nothing to smartly lock or unlock.  It is also a fallback if smart unlock doesn't work as happens many times in case of trusted faces.

The settings for Smart Lock are found here: Settings->Security->Smart Lock.

Interruptions, Vibrate and Silent modes in Lollipop

While browsing certain forums on the Internet, I have come across posts that seem to complain that true silent or vibrate only modes are no more available in the latest version of Android, namely, Lollipop.  Actually it is not so.  Not only are these options there, there are many other possibilities too.

In earlier versions one could choose between Mute, Vibrate and Sound (Normal) modes after a long press of the Power button. This was in addition to choosing between Power off, Airplane and other actions.  In Lollipop (stock version) the only option that you get after long pressing the Power button is Power off.

But now you get three options when you press the Volume Up or Down button while on one of the Home screens.  These options are labelled None, Priority and All.  These are the three Interrupt Levels.  None means that you don't want any interruptions in your work. If you choose None, the phone goes silent.  Silent here means no sound and no vibration either.  Though, any alarms set by you will sound.  If you want to mute the alarms too, you have to additionally set the volume to zero.  This is the equivalent of Silent mode that some users are not able to figure out.  Option All is the default and, of course, means the Normal mode.  The normal mode means that all sounds for incoming calls, messages, events and alarms will sound as configured.  If you have the option All chosen and just turn the volume down all the way to zero, the phone gets into Vibrate mode.  Also you may choose the option Priority and turn the volume to zero.  In this case the phone will vibrate only when there is a call (or message) from an important (starred) contact.

The Silent mode now has an additional feature.  If you press Volume Up or Down and choose the option None, you get an additional choice between Indefinite and defined number of hours.  So if you choose 1 hour, the default, the phone automatically reverts back to Normal mode after the defined period.

This feature of a preset time is also available for Priority interruptions.

Settings also allow you to automate Priority mode during predefined hours on chosen days of the week.

This finally brings us to the question, what is Priority?  To understand this we have to go to Settings->Sound & Notification->Interruptions.  The screen looks as follows:

Here, the very first item "When calls and notifications arrive" presents you three choices.  These are the same that you get when you press Volume Up or Down button.  Though the wordings are different, these correspond to All (Always Interrupt,) Priority (Allow only priority interruptions,) and None (Don't interrupt.)

The next item lets you choose what are priority interruptions for you.  You can specify whether you consider calendar messages (Events and Reminders) priority or not.  You can also define whether Messages are priority or not.  And, of course, you can specify whether or not phone calls are a priority for you.

For phone calls and messages you can further specify whether your choice applies to all calls and messages or are calls and messages from important contacts only to be considered a priority and allowed while all others may be muted depending on setting.  The contacts to be considered important have to be starred.  Any contact can be starred by touching the star at the top when you display that contact.  The star is a toggle and touching a starred contact unstarrs it.  It may be noted that calls and messages are not "prioritized" together but separately by turning their respective toggles on or off.  So you may consider calls priority while choosing not to do so for messages, or vice versa.

Alarms are always a priority and there is no way to set priority off for them.  But in case you want absolutely no interruptions including alarms, you can do so easily.  You have to turn the volume to zero using Volume Down key and choose None from the three options.  With this setting even alarms will not ring.

It may be noted that priorities and interruptions apply only to sounds.  The display always comes on when any interruption arrives.

It is always a good idea to have your important contacts starred.

You would have noticed from the screen above that you can also configure your phone for automating only priority interruptions during defined hours on selected days.  One would normally do that for normal sleeping hours.  If you want absolute silence during your sleep you can turn all the three Priority interruptions off.

This design is quite exciting and presents many possibilities through proper combinations of settings and quick options.

I will be happy to answer any queries in this matter.

Lollipop Adventures

I received Lollipop update (Android version 5.0; now 5.0.1 on Nexus 4 and 5.0.2 on Nexus 7) on my Nexus 4 phone OTA (over the air) about a month ago and loved the new OS.  I kept checking for OS updates on my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet, but it failed to show up OTA.  Finally I decided to download the factory image from Google and update it manually.

This called for loading of JDK (Java Development Kit) and Android Studio on top of it on my Windows laptop.  Thereafter certain components of SDK Manager had to be downloaded using Android Studio.  Finally, as required, I added an environment variable JAVA_HOME with its value set to the directory holding JDK and added the SDK directory to system PATH.  This was done using System Properties on the laptop.  All this labor made available 'adb' and 'fastboot' commands in the 'cmd' window on the laptop for unlocking the bootloader and readying the device for flashing it from the image downloaded and unzipped by me earlier.

Doing all this took whole of a day.  I was afraid that I might end up bricking my device but went ahead nonetheless.  Finally I did it and felt great when my tablet booted with Lollipop 5.0.2 for the first time.  However the feeling was soon gone as the browser started becoming unresponsive and crashing.  This unresponsive attitude spread to other apps and the OS as well.  Soon I was rebooting the device every few hours.  Replacing the Chrome browser with Dolphin provided some relief to start with but that too started fading soon.

This called for more research.  The research suggested that I wipe my cache partition using low level system commands.  For this you have to get into the mode that you would for factory resetting your device - by powering it off and then on by pressing Power and Volume Dn keys together.  At this level there is no touch screen and you navigate the menu using volume up and down buttons and select an option using the Power button.  So you choose Recovery Mode and then press Volume Up and Power buttons to get the next menu.  From this menu you choose the menu for wiping cache.  Finally you reboot.

Cache wiped, the device did show a little more life.  But alas, it faded pretty quickly.  Finding myself back to square 1 I thought of killing the Lollipop and taking the retrograde step of loading the Kitkat image back on my device.  However something at the back of my mind told me to check the sync settings.  So I navigated to Settings->Accounts->Google.  When I touched my displayed Google account a large number of apps and components appeared.  All had a check in the box against them.  Desperate as I was I unchecked all the boxes.  Presto!  The system was running fine and the lags, disappearing and freezing screens were all gone.

Becoming a little bold after my experiment, I checked a few boxes in my Google account sync settings back to on.  These were Mail, Contacts and App Data.  The system is still working fine and I hope with a certain level of confidence that it will continue that way.  I have a suspicion that unchecking the box against Chrome alone would perhaps be enough to solve the problem.  However, I have deferred the experiment for the time being.

So if Lollipop is making you desperate, head straight to sync settings for your Google account on the device.  The solution lies there and not in the cache partition.

Wish you a sweet Lollipop experience.