[G Pad 8.3 General] DeanGibson:
Lollipop differences

This should probably be in a different thread, but because it was asked here:

I don't use the multi-window feature.

1. Battery life seemed a bit less initially (I haven't done recent checks).

2. The really, really annoying thing is how long it sometimes takes to update an app from the Google Play store. For example, just now I selected the "Speedtest.net" app to update. I have two VK810 tablets identically configured (and not rooted), and on one tablet, the Speedtest.net" update took just a few seconds. On the other one (started at the same time), it took several minutes. If there are several apps to update, it can take 10-15 minutes. It seems random as to which one (or usually, both) will have the delay (or not). This never happens on my LG G3 (VS985), also running Lollipop. All three use the same WiFi network.

This never happened when the VK810 tablets were on v4.4. I even tried going back to a factory-fresh install of v4.4 and then applying the Lollipop OTA update again, to no avail.

Someone suggested that it was that Lollipop uses the new ANT library, and that apps are now compiled when they are installed, and not when run, hence the delay. OK, but that doesn't explain the randomness of the delay, or the random difference between the update times for the two tablets.

3. The notification scheme seems a bit better (in terms of choices) but more complex on Lollipop.

4. On Lollipop, even though the external microSD card is formatted FAT32, Lolllipop enforces application storage directory access by .apk file name. That is, if the installed app has the internal name "com.vendor.app", then access to the corresponding app directory (under "Android/data") is limited to just the owning app, as a new security mechanism. If you are rooted, this is not an issue, but if not, it can be annoying if you want to do file management with (say) "ES File Explorer" (which won't have sufficient privileges to create/modify/delete some app files). However (at least in the VK810 update), Lollipop includes a basic "File Manager" which has elevated file access privileges and can do the needed changes. Of course, if you remove the microSD card from the tablet and insert it into a PC, you can access everything (since it's still basic FAT 32).

5. Finally, for several years on all my Android tablets (over a dozen models), once a month I copy about 8GB of data in about 20,000 files, from my PC to the microSD card on any of my tablets, using a USB cable and the ADB "push" command. With the VK810 tablets (and I think the LG G3 as well) under v4.4, the push would fail once the transfer got over about 100MB. With all the other Android devices, there was never a problem transferring huge amounts of data with ADB "push". Since the VK810 microSD card slot is easily accessible, I just temporarily moved the microSD cards to a PC for the transfer.

However, with Lollipop on the three LG devices, the transfers run to completion. Now, since I updated the LG USB drivers about the same time as I updated to Lollipop, I don't know whether the new drivers solved the issue. I think I recall (when the VK810 tablets were rooted under v4.4) that ADB transfers via WiFi also failed on large transfers, which would seem to eliminate the USB drivers as the issue, and locate the problem to the version of ADB on the tablets (ADB on the PC did not change). At any rate, that issue seems fixed in Lollipop.