[Nexus 10 General] joakim_one:
Just got the 5.0 OTA last night, thought I'd share my impressions, especially since this is likely the last major update we'll get straight from google.

The update started with a 325 MB download, then a couple minutes staring at circles bouncing around, followed by 10 mins of "optimizing" apps, likely compiling them for ART. New lock screen is a little funny, have to swipe up to go to the homescreen since the circle lock is gone, and notifications show up right away. The notifications pulldown has gone back to only one, with a second or two-finger pull necessary to see quick settings, no idea why this changes with every Android update.

I have a lot more default google apps uninstalled than new apps installed, and they always try to sneak a couple more in with each major OTA update. In this case, it was a new Photos app, that doesn't work at all with Google+ disabled as I have it; a Google Docs app that requires being signed into a google account, replacing the QuickOffice app that was there before, which didn't require signing in and could actually read pdfs; and a Contacts app that I believe I had disabled before, since it's useless on a tablet without phone service. I disabled all three (strangely, there were two Photos apps with the same icon in the Settings, disabled them both), all of them went into the junk pile with Google Play Newsstand and all the rest. This means I don't have a photo/video Gallery app installed anymore, oh well, have to go find one.

They don't seem to have pulled any fast ones with the Settings this time, though the categories have become even harder to touch to select since they take up half the space horizontally but are still thin vertically. Lollipop feels like a step backwards in UI and usability across the board, for example, the new labels are confusingly undifferentiated from clickable options: I tried to hit the Advanced heading in the Chrome Beta settings five times before I realized it was not clickable. Scrolling down the Settings and hitting the bottom makes a strange half-circle shadow show up at the top, no idea what's going on there.

The graphics generally looked strangely jagged and lower-res right after updating, which I especially noticed with the Chrome Beta, which doesn't show each tab separately in the app switcher like advertised, maybe that's for phones only. Another place the graphics are worse are in the data and battery graphs. Maybe that was just after the update though, because Chrome Beta doesn't seem as bad to me now, or maybe I've already gotten used to it. The data usage graph is worse, since I can't change the time period to a week or 10 days anymore and see what's been using up data lately.

Otherwise, my Nexus 10 feels faster across the board, probably because of ART, and battery life seems to have improved when idle. It's strange how this tablet has had such wild swings in idle battery life over the last couple years, with some Android builds lasting 3-4 days when idle with wifi enabled and others going weeks! I like how the battery usage graph now tries to extrapolate how much time you have left if using the tablet, though I could see that image confusing some users.

As for apps, as usual MX Player stopped working after the upgrade because it doesn't recognize the new 5.0 version number, will have to wait for them to update before trying it out. Everything else seems to work fine. Maybe I'll update here once I get a chance to use lollipop more, but it seems to be a strange mix of better performance and going backwards in UI and usability, with a lot of UI changes seemingly made for the sake of changing something, often making it worse.

Why can't google just focus on adding multi-window to base Android, a feature I've wanted for years and which would actually make Android tablets more capable, instead of adding another coat of paint to the UI and needlessly moving things around over and over again? Guess I'll have to go Samsung and put up with touchwiz if I ever want that.