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T-Mobile’s LG G3 started receiving its Lollipop upgrade yesterday, though many were disappointed to find that it was only available over-the-wire with a tool only available for PC. If you weren’t able to use that tool to upgrade your phone you’ll be happy to know that we’ve snapped up the OTA file T-Mobile is eventually planning to push to handsets.
You can download the file right here, and either flash it through ADB’s flashing tool (here’s a handy guide on AndroidForums.com) or placing it onto the root of your storage and flashing it through your device’s recovery (you should name the file update.zip to ensure recovery can find it). We should note that you do this at your own risk, so if you aren’t comfortable carrying this out on your own then you should either find a way to use a PC or simply wait for T-Mobile to push the OTA to your device. Happy flashing!
I’ve heard some nay-saying about how this update affects battery life on people’s G3. Anyone have personal experience yet (either with Tmobiles for the last day or with other carriers for the last few weeks)?
Going on a big business trip in a week and a half and I don’t want to upgrade if it’s going to become a problem for when I won’t be near wall outlets all day.
I downloaded this last night and can confirm the battery drain. The resources hogging the battery seem to be those which did not before on 4.4.4.
In Jelly bean 4.2, the location and GPS options remained separate, allowing you to control them better. It KitKat and above, they embedded GPS options into location services. In your notification menu, you will see Location as a selectable option. Disabling it stops all location services, including GPS. Whereas previous versions of Android kept them separate. This change is a nuisance for those who only want their GPS on during certain events and was easily manageable.
Now, the battery drain; the common hogs which result in High battery use. T-mobile my account, Google play services, Google Wallet. The high battery use indicators are not uncommon, but these were not such hogs in 4.4.4.
Minor phone use with Spotify and typing this post; from 100% at 6:50am to now; 72%. We all know screen brightness takes a toll as well, but those who know how to conserve battery life do so.
Disappointed I upgraded too soon.
Thanks for the detailed reply!! I’ll certainly hold off for a few more weeks at least. Hopefully they’ll release 5.1 sooner than later, as I hear that address many of the bugs.
I downloaded the update last night and haven’t had any real issues yet. I had to charge it at work today (usually don’t charge until bed time), but that is most likely because I was heavily downloading and updating apps (about 1GB worth). With screen brightness at 50% with Bluetooth and location services turned off I got about 2.5 hours of screen time before I plugged it in with 35% battery left. On Kit Kat I was getting around 3.5 hours of screen time with the same settings (except now I have VoLTE turned on — no clue if that makes a difference), but that was with charging at only 15% battery left.
Here are the main battery hogs since the update:
1) Screen 47%
2) Android OS 7%
3) Android System 5%
4) Facebook 4%
5) Google Play Store 4%
Not sure the top three are any different than when my G3 was on Kit Kat. Too early to tell if the battery life is any worse though. I probably wouldn’t risk it if you need the phone for your job though. Just some random observations.
Interesting about VOLTE. I’ll monitor that too
I downloaded it yesterday, immediately reset it, ran the battery down to 2%, charged it completely, and reset it again, used it some more, then charged it to 100% before I left home, followed by another reset.
It feels like it’s stabilized after that final reset…no laginess detected yet (I didn’t do a full wipe). It’s been off charger for an hour and a half now, with 20 minutes of screen on time. I’ve used Google Now, some web surfing with Boat Browser, a quick game of Skyforce, and a Quickoffice doc. It’s dropped 5% with that.
Seems reasonable to me. I think people complaining of battery drain are generally running into two things…first, they aren’t resetting it enough to let everything settle, and two, they’re playing with it more than they were before because it’s new and shiny.
Note4, cmon…..
Kit Kat on the original G Flex came out on T-Mo around the same time as the G3 so I wonder if they will have it soon. I’d love to get my update sometime soon.
Can I update my G3 without a computer? If so can someone show me a step by step explaining how to do so
Not a huge fan so far. Before I only had to hold the home button to get to Google Now but I have to hold it and slide my finger up to open it. Also, I don’t like how the music/podcast controls are displayed on the lockscreen. The music/podcast artwork still takes up the whole screen but now there’s a widget I don’t like and the skip back button has disappeared.