By During what appears to have become “maintenance update” week in the Android world – with the Samsung Epic 4G, Samsung Fascinate, Samsung Captivate, HTC Hero, HTC EVO 4G, and the Motorola Droid X all getting updates of some sort (Froyo or otherwise) – the LG Ally throws up its “me too” flag and will be offering a maintenance update of their own. It reportedly started this past Friday, and here’s what to expect when your device pulls it down within the next few weeks:
- Enjoy preloaded applications like City ID, Skype,® My Verizon,and Corporate Directory.
- Updated Backup Assistant application.
- Enhanced ability to pair Ally with multiple Bluetooth® devices.
- Improved camera performance.
- Overall enhancement for Microsoft® Exchange email accounts.
- Improved device detection when syncing Ally to a PC via USB cable.
- Operate the Gallery application with improved speed and efficiency.
- Improved Android¿ operating system security.
- Enhanced battery life.
- Improved application responsiveness when opening from home screen.
It all sounds pretty nice, so be sure to install this as soon as it’s ready to be pulled down to your Ally.
[via AC, LG Forums, Verizon Forums]
So there’s no set date for when the ally is getting the update?
So is this rolling out WITH Froyo, or ahead of it?
Update offered on my Ally but I finished a TM first. How do I go back to update?
i got my update today. it works better nut the applacations like skype and city id wasnt needed thay are easy to get from the market and are a waste of space. you cant delete them and city id requires a 1.99 monthly fee i mean come on we have limit space as it is witht he 100 mb they installed. the google maps already takes up more than 10 of it! currently awaiting the 2.2 update but am skeptical from things ive heard. we should be speeding up our phones not slowing them down to render them usless. other than that i love my ally. just wish it had more space and speed!
got the update as well. sweet little phone but as Luke indicated… internal memory is a limiting factor on this phone. I do not see 2.2 running on this phone at all.
This update is only a maintence update and a way to add some other junk that verizon wants us to add. But when we are eligable for the 2.2 upgrade I’m wondering if I should even bother with it. I have a friend with the droid 2(a more powerful phone than ally) and from what he says it slows his phone down even with the storing to sd card. So I’m agreeing with tim we may have issues with it eating up the speed of the phone. The current maintenance upgrade issued today is worth it I can tell a diffrence with battery life and with the gallery app. Just not a fan of the apps that came along with the maintenance upgrade.
Just got the maintenance update for my Ally. It runs much faster and has fixed the intermittent lock up and spontaneous restart problems I’ve had with this phone since I bought it. Just wish I didn’t have to wait three months for it!
Wife’s Ally received the update on Tuesday evening. This is a maintenance update for 2.1, it is not the 2.2 update. Haven’t had enough time with it to tell how battery performance is, but could do without the pre-installed apps.
How to u get the updade and yea….i need more internal memory
I got my new update 2days ago and I’m not overly happy with the fact that my apps disappeared after restart my paid apps don’t seem to work and thatgoes for themes too…it better be fixed or I’m going to at&t and getting an iPhone…and for those who say it isn’t the carriers fault well guess what Verizon will do nothing
Awesome. My wife got the update this morning on her LG Ally. I guess I’ll get mine tomorrow….I hope.
Just downloaded it and does seem to be moving faster. For me it wasnt just the LG skin. My ADW seemed to be running more efficiently too. I did just delete a crap load of apps of my phone too tho. My memory is at lik 50MB! I dont have much on there I guess you could say. But It’s running quickly now. I dont know about the battery life thing yet. All my apps do seem to be working. Dont like the “madatory” apps. I think that’s BS. But it does seem to be running faster nonetheless…I’ll take it…
I got the update today. Now, when using messaging or dialing, it locks up and resets itself. Any clues on why this might be happening?
So I pretty much got my hopes up for nothing when I clicked install? And when is FroYo coming out? I’m getting extremely peeved that us Ally owners are going to be one of the last to receive FroYo.
How do you delete the City ID app?
To everyone asking how to get the update after ignoring the inital prompt: go to Settings, About this phone (at the bottom), and then Check for updates (at the top). That should let you get back to pulling the update.
From my Ally ;)
Ok so skype came with the download? I had the skype app… my phone will not open the app and I have no new skype icon… other apps are gone too…. they need to fix this asap…
I had the same problem with the apps that MZkarebear had, I had to uninstall and reinstall my Skype and 2 other apps that were corrupted. You can reinstall apps that you paid for in the market place for free. A little annoying but it worked for me with no problem
I let my Ally upgrade on the evening of the 23rd. Three apps were corrupted: Skype, CBSNews, and Bubble Level. Uninstalled and reinstalled these, and they worked. Until this morning. Now I won’t bother to reinstall. Makes me wonder what will break next time. Is this a way for Verizon to clear memory for their perferred apps?
After update installed, it broke my LogMeIn Ignition App. Had to unistall/reinstall, to get it working again. No big deal…just a quick scare, as it’s a $30 app, and I use it to support my clients. With time put into this update…one wonders about how far off the FROYO update, for Ally is? Seems like this update would be a waste of time, if FROYO is coming out soon…
To those asking how to find the update again you have to go to settings, then phone info, then the first one should be check for updates. and has it really been fixing freezing problems because mine sux cuza that and it would really be nice if that was fixed.
Is anyone having problems with they’re ringtones no longer being available for the alarm after the update? I had to create a whole new folder with the ringtones I wanted for the alarm when I got the phone 3 months ago and now they’re gone
My phone updated on 9-23, and the battery life went down considerably. It’s only lasting a few hours now with hardly even any use.
New LG Ally update for android deleted several apps…..wish they would get their act together….hoping I didnt make a mistake with this ally
Got this update a couple days ago now. Since then the phone is randomly starting apps to run in the back ground, when I open Advanced Task Killer I’ll have up to 15 apps running that I never started. The battery life has gone way down hill from giving me a couple days idle with low use to needing to be charged every night after low use. My 3G experience was very good, now the Marketplace is slow and sluggish and web surfing is… well let’s just say I avoid it. Several apps that I had installed no longer function, uninstalling and re-installing them worked. The Ally was better off without this update, how do I roll it back?
**AVOID THIS UPDATE**
I got this update days ago, and I have to say, it does make thing a bit faster. Though, I didn’t notice the camera speed until I read about it. It certainly starts up in half the time.
Got the update over the weekend. Deleted City ID, and the Corporate Directory. Probably gonna delete the My Verizon app as well. You have to root your phone to delete this crap.
The pluses of the update are that the Camera definitley loads quicker, and the batterly life does seem improved. Not sure if that’s so much from the update, or the fact that i’ve deleted many of the preloaded apps that can bog things down. Or, it could be a combination of both.
I had problems with my battery not lasting very long. There is a program called Advanced Task Killer. It is a free download from the market. It has helped considerably. If you notice your phone is running slow just open up this program and select kill all apps. All this does is closes out of all the programs that are running at one time that shouldn’t be running. As far as the update goes I haven’t really noticed any changes.
I have had nothing but problems since I have installed this update. It broke several of my apps, seems to run slower than before, my weather and youtube apps do not connect anymore, and my mail won’t load properly. I’m a little upset with all this
This update hasn’t done nothing but kill my battery thus far. As a few others mentioned, a bunch of programs automatically start running in the background without you telling them, and there looks to be no way to stop it, save deleting them. I wish I could uninstall this update…
I think my phone is running slower after the download. Like everyone else. I’m not happy that along with the update they decided for me on apps that I didn’t want. Corrupted several that I had picked for myself. If they want to do upgrades I think rather than slipping crap that I don’t need in along with whatever else. They should make sure it isn’t going to conflict with anything else. That’s the problem with most of todays manufacturers. They forget that as a consumer we chose to buy their product to use as we like. But after the sale they feel like thy have the right to touch my stuff without asking. Upgrade the operating system. Leave the rest of it alone.
This update allows the download of Angry Birds Lite! Thats the only thing I care about.
Battery life seems worse since update.
Since this update, applications just start running without me knowing and kills my battery life. I’m going to have a word with VZW about this silly update.
I think this update is a blessing and a curse. Skype and Livo Pro keep getting corrupt when I restart the phone.
I am not please with this as I still have to restart my phone from time to time due to slowness and I have to reinstall Livo Pro which I use for recording classes.
PLEASE FIX ASAP!
This new system has ruined my Ally! Email has connection problems and sends the same email to my phone 10 times even after I delete it. Battery life is also ruined, phone will be dead in 8 hours after a full charge with NO USE AT ALL. Very dissapointed in this “update”.
same issue here with skype.. remove and reinstallation of updates needed after every reboot. SUCKS!
TimmyTurtle, I couldn’t have said it better myself! My ‘smart’ phone is pretty dumb after this update.
How do I take off preloaded apps? I don’t want or need some of them!
First to get rid of the stupid apps verizon put on the ally you need to root your phone. Universal is a one step root. Download clockworkmod free from the market and upgrade your phone to eclair and velocity 0.2. You can then uninstall those apps that came with your phone you never use and the maintance apps. Be carefull to not uninstall apps that work with your os or you will brick your phone. Task managers should not be used. Linux understands that some apps run and shut off occasionally and if you need to shut them off go to settings applications running apps and shut them down from there. I noticed longer battery life and better speeds without task killers.
One thing I noticed about the new update is that no longer does my Ally drain more battery power than it can charge when connected via usb. It used to be that if I plugged my phone into my laptop it would drain the battery faster than my laptop could charge it. That is no longer the case, although usb still isn’t as fast as a standard wall charger, but at least it charges my phone now.
I bought my phone used two weeks ago, it came with 2 batteries (they are aftermarket batteries) The phone worked great for about 2 weeks then two days ago I got the update (previous owner hadn’t used it since August??). Now my aftermarket batteries won’t work in the Ally. As a matter of fact it wouldn’t even boot, just had a blue status light. Called Verizon, they sent me another phone, that one does the same thing. After doing research the only thing I can come up with is the aftermarket batteries. I spoke to a Verizon rep, she said that the manufacturer has software that will not let it use a genuine battery. It worked fine before the update now it is broken, why should I have to buy new batteries because of a software/firmware update? That in my opinion is just wrong.
Does anybody know the status of being able to use a flash player on the phone?
Just received another maintenance update this morning. I’m not sure what, if any noticeable changes were made but in checking the system info, my firmware still says version 2.1-update 1, Kernel 2.6.29. I didn’t see any new unwanted crapware installed so have to wonder what improvements were made.
Just updated my ally this morning and now it won’t root using universal androot. Anyone know why or how to root it with another ap other than androot?
I also received this update on Wednesday…Not being able to root must have been it because now I cant tether which sucksss:( and there are still newer phones that have better processors that haven’t received 2.2…this phone is plenty capable because if the droid which runs a 528 mhz processor can do it then a phone with a better 600mhz can too:) it is on the list but people are saying that because of the lg overlay they have to do twice the work as to other phones
Just got the latest update and I hate it! It has messed everything up!
Just did the update this evening. Now the phone won’t do anything, can’t even get to home screen. Called technical support and they couldn’t do anything, except send me a REFURBISHED PHONE. Got this phone on Dec 13th and they won’t send me a new one, talk about a bunch of crap, it’s their fault the one I have doesn’t work because of THEIR download!! They even said they’ve had calls about this all day. Apparently, if you don’t have an iphone you don’t matter.
I was excited to see that the phone was finally being updated, however now i regret pushing the “install now” option. This so called “update” has ruined my phone. I can no longer receive SMS or MMS text messaging and when I try to even open my messages the phone freezes. I tried doing everything possible to fix this problem, hopefully ill find the solution soon.
-very disappointed verizon customer :(
Did the update the other day and didn’t see much difference but the color added screens…unfortunately they shrunk the numberic key size for my fat fingers to hit on the phone UI….Also every Text message sent reportsthat it SEND FAILS…but the recipient tell me they got the 10 tries I sent…. thought it was the service, but phone worked great after the last updateand beforethis one.. HOW DOI DOWNGRADE back to the previous version….andwhere was my CHOICE to Update…it started automatically