Many issues with ICS update... Not sure it's worth it...

[J515OP]

I rang the helpline TWICE yesterday (local time). Got a different rep each time. Each rep (obviously from the accent in Manila) told me the update was flawed...that there were problems and that the official word from head office was that the update (local Australian) was being pushed back to May16th. Now, why on earth would I lie about this?

I don't think you were being called a liar they just wanted to see an official statement. You very well could be right but phone operators aren't the most reliable sources. We won't really know until there is an official statement one way or the other. The way corporations handle these things they will be a day late and a dollar short (or whatever you say in OZ) by the time they admit to a bad update. Hopefully they just make good at that point and happily correct people's issues.

 

[diiorio]

The updates have not halted. The message given is due to server congestion and it decreased and holding some back from obtaining the update. Partially to prevent corruption of data.

It isn't because the update itself has severe issues. A very few have reported issues, many are those who have also posted about leaks in the past and that coudl result in issues. Others possibly had interupted downloads that may have lead to some stray code, or simply the system needign to reboot and config.

I know more with perfectly fine updates, versus the few not fine. Like others said, msot with perectly fine updates, and their are thousands by now, are not going to report no issues it on a fan site.

Tally up major issues on ADA and here and one other site and it is 12 users. Tally up people that like it and it is over 100. Tally in people that updated and moved on, who knows.

If there were major issues, Acer would have halted it totally rather then throttle connections. They woudl ahve posted it on the offcial site and only real official facebook page. Server congestion was reported, but not a flawed update. Guess we woudl get the patch first if it was such a case.

Yet rember Acer posted back before the 19th when NA would get the update in large batches on the 27th, and in NZ, Australia, India, and some other regions in May.

Sad thing is they have 1 server running all NA updates.

 

[Greg_E]

Still waiting for my paycheck from Acer to arrive , wish they would go to direct deposit

I guess I was lucky that my OTA went fine even though it must have been during the rush on the first official day of updates, either that or the East Coast people got a jump on all the rest because they were still asleep. Either way with the exclusion of Winamp everything is working great and it's a lot faster. Not sure how much of that speed is due to all the stuff I have disabled, and don't really care 'cause it seems to be working great!

The only other issue I'm having is playing videos from classondemand.net, neither the full version (Silverlight) nor the mobile (not sure but it suggests Flash) are working, but they also didn't work on Honeycomb so I don't think it is an OS issue. I knew there was no Silverlight for Android so no surprise that the full site didn't work, they do claim function with 3.x and 4.x so not sure what the deal is.

 

[diiorio]

install the flash player off market place. its seprate now. need to use default browser

 

[Greg_E]

install the flash player off market place. its seprate now. need to use default browser

Did that, still no luck, but thanks for the suggestion. Other flash based sites work just fine so I'm not sure what they are doing, I've tried 3 different browsers to see if it is a browser issue, two of the three say the stream is not supported. Stock browser gives me a white box and I can force the audio to play, Firefox and Dolphin say unsupported.

 

[joelmatton]

I'm stuck in landscape mode after the update and have never unlocked my tablet or done anything fishy
I'm trying to get help with Acer right now.
I have the A500
I tried what other people did. REbooting, toggling the lock swtich. Nothing seems to work

 

[joelmatton]

I spoke with an acer rep. They told me in the end to reload. So I did a factory reset. Guess what. Orientation still doesnt switch to portrait. Just wasted my time. I'm gonna have to go back on to the support site and try again.

 

[diiorio]

Oddly that happened to some Xooms and Transformers. Im lucky I had zip issues, and a flawless isntall. But OTas are still nerve wrackign after I had a phoen bricked by one.

 

[ebookof]

Acer had also acknowledged on my end that they had issues and were working on an update to fix things up. But they didn't know when it would be available.

I have spent enough time trying to fix things (even after a factory reset, the gps, wifi and bluetooth don't work correctly).

I am sending my tablet back to Acer and have them deal with the mess they created.

 

[Mrhelper]

I spoke with an acer rep. They told me in the end to reload. So I did a factory reset. Guess what. Orientation still doesnt switch to portrait. Just wasted my time. I'm gonna have to go back on to the support site and try again.

Don't give up yet. You probably have one or more misbehaving apps triggering a condition that I wrote about earlier in this thread, and on several other forums now. What I found is that the problem you describe would keep coming back after _any_ form of reset as long as I kept reloading certain apps, or force closing apps. Some apps that force closed automaticaly due to problems would cause this to start. Other apps that included task killer/app killer functionality would trigger it also. I suspect that it happened once when the system had to kill an app that I was removing. There may be other triggers also, but after removing the misbehaving apps, and refraining from killing apps via the Android app manager, I have not seen the problem once.

To prove if this is the problem you are encountering, install aLogcat from Market. When your auto rotate is not working, run aLogcat. If you see numerous errors in the log containing "MLUpdateData error (code 26)," then you can probably resolve this by eliminating the bad app(s) from your a500. This appears to be an error related to the accelerometer/g-sensor, apparently reporting that the driver or other related software cannot update the sensor data for the system. After elininating the bad apps that trigger this, one last reset using the pinhole button restores the sensor to normal operation.

If you never see the error in the log, and your a500 is otherwise baving normally then I guess you could coincidentally just be having a problem with your screen orientation lock switch next to the volume control.

This appears to be an OS bug, but many have not seen it, and many who have are working around it with great success. I've gotten replies from a number of folks so far that have taken the time to eliminate the bad apps, and have had success.

 

[kwhabq]

Installed April 27. All seemed fine, a bit faster, but no biggies stood out. Then tried hulu with flash video browser, and 2 hours of frustration I gave up.Then I tried again this morning. Hulu performed okay with a few familiar pauses as prior to ICS, so I'm pretty convinced that Hulu was probably overloaded or some other temporary glitch (I hope). Whew! I felt much better after staying with it. Chrome browser has some nice features, so I may use it as primary browser.

Well, things were not better for long. Hulu became a problem intermittently, so I contacted the author of FLASH VIDEO BROWSER. He said that ICS had broken flash, and he couldn't do anything about it. Even when a video starts playing, it most often hangs making restarts necessary. If anyone knows if Honeycomb can be reinstalled, please post.

 

[J515OP]

Well, things were not better for long. Hulu became a problem intermittently, so I contacted the author of FLASH VIDEO BROWSER. He said that ICS had broken flash, and he couldn't do anything about it. Even when a video starts playing, it most often hangs making restarts necessary. If anyone knows if Honeycomb can be reinstalled, please post.

Why would you reinstall Honeycomb if you are having trouble with a particular browser and Flash? No there is no official way to go back once you have updated. Why not focus your efforts on a working browser and version of Flash instead? If the developer of the browser is telling you they can't fix the issue with their browser and Flash then contact Adobe. The solution is that app developers need to update their apps to work with ICS not for the user to try and go back to a previous OS version.

 

[_Dick]

Updated from XDA

I finally got tired of waiting for the OTA, so I downloaded the ICS OTA from: Download the official a500 OTA ICS upgrade - xda-developers

The download was slow, and finally completed. I moved the Update file to the Micro SD and followed the direction:

1/ rename the file as : update.zip
2/ place the file on the micro sd card
3/ turn off the tablet
4/ press the down volume key and the power button at the same time untill the tablets turns on
5/ the iconia will start the upgrade process by itself.

It worked great as it installed, rebooted without issue, and now I have ICS.

Not sure if anything failed to work, but checking it out now.

Thanks for the information to allow me to update my A500

More later.

 

[kwhabq]

Why would you reinstall Honeycomb if you are having trouble with a particular browser and Flash? No there is no official way to go back once you have updated. Why not focus your efforts on a working browser and version of Flash instead? If the developer of the browser is telling you they can't fix the issue with their browser and Flash then contact Adobe. The solution is that app developers need to update their apps to work with ICS not for the user to try and go back to a previous OS version.

Why would I reinstall? Simply because I lost the ability to watch Hulu with a browser that would work before ICS was installed. No other browser has that capability. I haven't observed sufficient improvements in ICS to offset the loss of the FLASH VIDEO BROWSER. Hope that answers the question of why I preferred Honeycomb. That said, I just wanted to know if there was a way to go back.

 

[J515OP]

As I stated, there is not a way to go back unless you want to get into the business of rooting and custom ROMs. There are many many browsers available for Android. Some will work with the latest Flash and ICS and play Hulu. Not sure where you heard Flash Video Browser was the only one but that simply ins't the case. You are throwing the baby out with the bath water so to speak by saying ICS doesn't work and you need to go back to HC just because you lost the one way to watch Hulu you were familiar with.

Maybe you should try some browsers out (Dolphin is a popular browser and should work with Flash) and see if you find one that works. You could also try asking others here what browsers they are using and if they can watch Hulu. That is more productive than trying to go back to HC and you will probably find some good advice.

JP