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Comment by jrabone | Hacker News Reader

A release of Android 4.3 for the Nexus 4 fixing the Bluetooth bugs and the WiFi bugs and the battery bugs and the IPSEC VPN bugs would be nice, because frankly my previous Galaxy S2 worked a lot better, even with Gingerbread 2.3.5. Wish I'd never bothered upgrading.

It's a shame because the Nexus 7 has been for the most part trouble-free.

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My Galaxy Nexus worked really, really well when I first bought it. A couple of updates later it's running like molasses despite lots of spare HD space and no random services eating RAM. The culprit is the Google services I can't uninstall and can't stop from connecting, that eat up RAM when reception is poor trying (and failing) to connect.

I wish they'd test their new OSs on old Nexus models at the very least, and why the hell can't I uninstall Google Currents..

It could be a bug introduced with the most recent Jelly Bean update.

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=40961

My galaxy nexus seems to work a lot better after applying the workaround mentioned in that bug report. Thanks.

Honestly, Jelly Bean was rushed. That awful lock screen, lag bugs, and other issues are bewildering. I guess they needed to push it out for some internal goal and have been patching it since. I really hope their QA improves with the next big update.

I feel really bad that I recommended the Nexus 4 to a friend, and then he promptly ran into serious wifi bugs (no notifications when the phone goes to sleep). The bug is one that Google has known about for months (when he got the phone) and it was fixed trivially in the mod community, which goes to show that Google could have released a fix for it, but they didn't care.

I used to think the Nexus line was where I would get the best support--I've had two Galaxy Nexus phones (first Verizon, then T Mobile), and the whole experience with 4.2 lag issues have made me rethink this.

Yes. The last upgrade from 4.0.* (Ice Cream Sandwich) to 4.1.* (Jelly Bean) forces me to charge the battery twice a day (or leave it plugged at work).

It is incredible how the batteries issues are impacting mobile devices. This is an area where we need a breakthrough.

Do you mean from 4.1 to 4.2? I think that's the upgrade that caused some problems for most people.

That's certainly the upgrade that screwed up my Nexus 7: have it random pauses and terrible battery life.

No, in my case the 4.0.* to 4.1.* transition has a lot of impact in the battery life. I've not received the 4.2.* update yet.

Not an android user, but iOS has done this to me before (3.x to 4.0). The solution back then was (try each one successively), restart device, restore device from backup, reinstall and restore data. I'd never had to go to the last level except for whey using beta iOS builds.

I read about that in Android forums also, but some people don't notice changes.

In another note I am impressed with the iPad Mini battery: streaming an Internet radio all the night doesn't consume the battery.

iOS has always been amazingly good for music and (most) video usage for me. It's when I play games that torture the device (SF4 Volt) or use a lot of wireless radio that battery is burned up.

The way Android handles multi-tasking is a battery nightmare. I get random battery drain problems constantly and have had the same issue on all 4 of the Android phones I've owned so far. I don't care about 'real multitasking' so I wish Google would at least offer an option similar to Windows Phone where you can choose to maximize battery life at the expense of background services/apps. I can deal with consistently poor battery life but these random battery drains are not something I can plan ahead for. I can leave the house with 100% and 2 hours later have a dead battery or other days have no problems at all. It's infuriating how random it is.

What phone? When I had a samsun and touchwiz this would happen all the time. On my Nexus and CM9 phones, never happens.

For what it's worth, all android battery drain problems I've had have been solved by keeping wifi / mobile data off unless I'm actually using the internet. It's just easier (albeit possibly less satisfying) than identifying & fixing the dozen apps that are each waking the phone every few minutes to check something individually. (Additional benefit: I don't get distracted from work by email/im/facebook notifications).

I had horrible issues with my nexus 7 till the most recent android update. The performance is still subpar, but it doesn't crash as much, at the least. I will wait till some people have test drived any new version of the n7 before getting it.

Oh! No Nexus for me then.

Don't drop the whole series based on a few bad experiences.

I have been using a Galaxy Nexus since they came out, and a Nexus 7 for almost a year (both currently at 4.2.2 via normal OTA updates). Neither has had any of the problems described.

Lemons happen. Also, these are complex machines that run complex software; malware happens too, as does innocently-perpetrated excessive resource consumption by background processes created by third-party developers that either aren't careful enough or simply missed something complex.

There's a lot of reasons things like this can happen. By many accounts the Nexus 4 does actually have serious issues in a lot of ways... of course, there are also many people that have and love this phone, too.

Don't judge the entire line based on a few complaints.

Don't worry about a few bad reviews. For each bad review there are thousands of people who don't have any complaints and don't bother to talk about it online. For instance, I've never had any trouble with my Nexus devices.

I've had no issues with my Nexus 4.

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