[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] bhugh:
Upgrade to Lollipop 5.1 - results so far

I've been using the Lollipop 5.0 package for the past couple of months. Honestly I was about to give up on it. Here are the problems encountered (I reported most of these up-thread):

Microphone mute doesn't work (at ALL) when using phone

Frequent camera malfunction, requiring re-boot to fix

Can't get SuperSU to work (similar to problems reported by others upthread)

Super-laggy/slow performance; this seemed to get worse over time. After 2 months the phone was well-nigh unusable.

Apps would randomly quit working when you navigate away from them (ie, maps/navigation, podcast players)

Charging with power off results in lockup; won't start; requires battery pull to fix

As many of you have reported here, I upgraded to the Lollipop 5.1 release MWisBest kindly released here:

http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=59375942&postcount=2833

Also I enabled the "remove animations" fix suggested on the same thread (go to 'developer options' and disable all three options that mention 'animation').

With those two fixes in places for a day, here is what my experience is like now on those issues:

Microphone mute doesn't work (at ALL) when using phone

This is still broken.

Frequent camera malfunction, requiring re-boot to fix

This seems somewhat improved. Yet, still a problem.

The issue seems to happen particularly when you are using the camera and then (without exiting the camera app) just hit the side button to turn off the screen. When you then push the button to turn the screen on again, the camera hangs. After that you'll get the dreaded 'can't connect to camera' error. Then your only fix is to re-boot

The trouble is, when you're using the camera, that is the most commonly way it's used! You get the camera app going, take a few photos, hit the button to put the phone to sleep. Then a few minutes later, you hit the button again to take a few photos, rinse, and repeat. The Lollipop Rom will lock up every time when you follow this procedure.

UPDATE: Using the CameraZoom FX app instead of the stock camera seems to solve this problem. This is the camera app recommended by MWisBest in the OP of this thread, that seems to fix camera problems:

http://xdaforums.com/galaxy-nexus/development/rom-fml-fork-life-06-05-2014-v2-t2764064

Here is the link to the CameraZoom FX app page:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=slide.camZoomFree&hl=en

UPDATE 2: Upon further testing CameraZOOM FX works better than the regular camera, but still has the same malfunction. You can turn the phone off and then immediately back on without triggering the 'camera not found' bug.

But if, with camera up and running, you turn the screen off with the side button, then wait a while, then turn the screen back on with the button/unlock, CameraZOOM FX will completely lock up.

Can't get SuperSU to work (similar to problems reported by others upthread)

Still can't get it to work, despite flashing it from recovery, etc. Not sure what the problem is.

Super-laggy/slow performance; this seemed to get worse over time. After 2 months the phone was well-nigh unusable.

This seems to be greatly, amazingly improved in the 5.1 rom. We'll see if this problem stays fixed, as the 5.0 rom seemed to get more and more laggy as the weeks progressed. I'm not sure if something was happening over time, certain apps were causing the problem, or what.

Apps would randomly quit working when you navigate away from them (ie, maps/navigation, podcast players)

I haven't had a chance to test this yet.

Charging with power off results in lockup; won't start; requires battery pull to fix

Still seems to be a problem with 5.1.

Of these, I consider the lagginess and broken camera to be the main dealbreakers. The others are annoyances (along with some other bugs reported by others, like the flashlight bug--I never use the flashlight, so I don't even notice this).

If the lagginess is truly fixed, that leaves the camera crash as my main dealbreaker. With no fix for that, I'm putting the Lollipop 5.1 ROM in the 'still not ready for prime time' category.

Question: Those of you who have used the KitKat/4.4 rom: Does it have these same issues? I'm considering downgrading to KitKat until these problems are worked out.

Can you downgrade from Lollipop to KitKat without completely wiping the phone?