LG

I tried the airplane mode trick and am down to about 23-25% time without signal now ...it seemed to help.

I am now at 5% time without a signal. Much better.

Posted by travel_rob on 23 Jul 2010 08:02 AM:

Thanks for the reply - I can't image that my phone is really busted as it is working very well for me.

The Verizon tech said that their servers are not pushing the update, only the LG servers. The LG tech seemed to confirm this. It seem like the upgrade would HAVE to come via the Verizon servers but maybe I got a couple of techs that:

a) Didn't really know

b) Didn't really care

OR

c) Didn't think the customer would bother to follow up on their info

-- a moot point-but it felt good to grouse a bit

Just an FYI - Before I attempted the OTA update, I did check the SETTINGS>> About phone>> System Update and it did show an update available (but I did not initiate the update that way - I waited until the popup asked again).

I don't know if Verizon will let me keep the existing memory card so I was going to backup everything before I took the phone in anyway. I think your idea of doing a factory reset and then a restore is a good one, and probably the safest route, so I'll try that first.

A kind soul found a copy of the V9 file, and I was going to see if I could figure out how to unpack/merge/replace the OS via that file. I assume it will take me a couple of days to decypher what is going on in the V9 file, so that should give the backed up/reset/restored phone a chance to get another shot at the update OTA. Either way I'll drop a note back on this forum with my success or failure.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

Sorry you're getting mixed messages... I'll dig into this a little deeper on Monday.

Ver 9 File?? Interesting. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to try and manually install the update... So you're saying that your phone did prompt you again and this time it failed as well? If your phone failed twice to update I would exchange it and I would think Verizon would allow you to keep your MicroSD card and just swap it with a the new one.

Let us know what happens.

Posted by travel_rob on 23 Jul 2010 08:02 AM:

Thanks for the reply - I can't image that my phone is really busted as it is working very well for me.

The Verizon tech said that their servers are not pushing the update, only the LG servers. The LG tech seemed to confirm this. It seem like the upgrade would HAVE to come via the Verizon servers but maybe I got a couple of techs that:

a) Didn't really know

b) Didn't really care

OR

c) Didn't think the customer would bother to follow up on their info

-- a moot point-but it felt good to grouse a bit

Just an FYI - Before I attempted the OTA update, I did check the SETTINGS>> About phone>> System Update and it did show an update available (but I did not initiate the update that way - I waited until the popup asked again).

I don't know if Verizon will let me keep the existing memory card so I was going to backup everything before I took the phone in anyway. I think your idea of doing a factory reset and then a restore is a good one, and probably the safest route, so I'll try that first.

A kind soul found a copy of the V9 file, and I was going to see if I could figure out how to unpack/merge/replace the OS via that file. I assume it will take me a couple of days to decypher what is going on in the V9 file, so that should give the backed up/reset/restored phone a chance to get another shot at the update OTA. Either way I'll drop a note back on this forum with my success or failure.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

As for the info on your SDCard just download and install an imaging program and image the SDCard. Verizon gets a little "interesting" when it comes to returning bad phones. I would honestly be surprised if they allowed you to do the swap that Pro described.

I am wondering if someone would be so kind as to more fully explain this whole "time on standby" issue? I am wondering please:

1. If having to do airplane mode trick to "fix" this issue should not be the way to handle this as it really is a "band aid" fix.
2. If it is a unacceptable defect of the phone and should be exchanged at the store (I am still within my 30 days).
3. If this is a simple "quirk" of the Ally and should not interfere with the general functioning of the phone-which I really seem to overall not be having major issues-a freeze here or there but otherwise been OK.
4. If I should be kicking myself because I switched (breaking my contract) from ATT and dropped my Blackberry for this.



Thank you to anyone who can clear this up.

1. it's a band aid
2. All Android 2.1 phones will have it to 1 degree or another.
3. It makes the Battery drain a little bit quicker. Aside from that it causes no other issues.
4. For getting away from a BB absolutely not. For getting the Ally....Well time will only tell on that one. It really needs 2.2 or at least half the functionality of 2.2 backported to fix bugs.

Basically when you check you battery use (settings->About Phone->Battery Use). You will see "Cell Standby" click on that and you will see "Time Without Signal". The Android 2.1 OS has a bug that will cause that percentage to be very high (97-98% has been reported). It's all from a little bit of bad code for when the Cell Radio starts up. Having a high Time Without Signal percentage will drain you battery pretty quick because the phone is thinking it's in roaming so it boots power levels to the ant. in order to try to get a better signal.

Thanks for the reply. I am hovering around 11% time without signal right now so that's not horrible. I really hope LG puts out 2.2 in some capacity. I really like the Ally and have not had reason enough to return it. I realize ALL mobile phones have their issues and "quirks". This doesn't seem to be a terrible one thankfully.

Thanks to everyone that looked into this issue for me.

Just a couple of notes on where I'm at now:

1) I was unsuccessful at manually installing v9.

2) Wiping the phone and waiting for an update did not work - if I had to speculate, I would say that LG/Verizon has the serial number of my phone stored in some "updated" database as having completed the download and install, and would never offer my phone the chance for this update again.

3) Lucky for me Death2All110 in the adroidforums.com wrote out concise instructions on how to manually install any version of the software if you can get hold of the proper .cab file. His instructions can be found at: http://androidforums.com/lg-ally/124574-ally-v9-sw-update.html#post1227937 and I intend to give them a try later tonight.

Posted by travel_rob on 26 Jul 2010 07:10 AM:

Thanks to everyone that looked into this issue for me.

Just a couple of notes on where I'm at now:

1) I was unsuccessful at manually installing v9.

2) Wiping the phone and waiting for an update did not work - if I had to speculate, I would say that LG/Verizon has the serial number of my phone stored in some "updated" database as having completed the download and install, and would never offer my phone the chance for this update again.

3) Lucky for me Death2All110 in the adroidforums.com wrote out concise instructions on how to manually install any version of the software if you can get hold of the proper .cab file. His instructions can be found at: http://androidforums.com/lg-ally/124574-ally-v9-sw-update.html#post1227937 and I intend to give them a try later tonight.

I can check on the OTA Update and see how we can get around it... I would think that it checks the version you are running and will see that you are 'Down Level' and prompt for an upgrade, but I'll look.

Good Luck with manually installing the update. Let us know how it works out.

I've been following travel_rob's posts for a few days now because I had the same problem... Got offered the update last week (Monday or Tuesday, I think), accepted, seemingly went through the process, rebooted, and I still had v6. It did seem to go through the install rather quickly, which I was initially surprised at (and then not so much once I realized it hadn't installed). I waited until just yesterday (Sunday), and never got re-offered.

So, I went ahead with Pro's suggestion regarding the reset. Backed up everything with Titanium, did a full factory reset, reactivated the phone, and within maybe 10-15min I was offered the update again (before I could even go through the rooting process in order to restore with Titanium). Not sure if the reactivation reset my database entry or what. Anyway, once again I accepted it, and the same exact thing happened... i.e. still v6. I waited another hour or so, but never got another offer, so I just went ahead and restored my phone to it's previous state (the whole process took a while, so I haven't gone through it again, nor do I really want to).

Since I had *nothing* installed on my phone this second time around, I'm pretty sure that it had nothing to do with any "bad apps". However, the one thing in common both times was that I had my phone plugged into my laptop via the USB cable (it's my typical recharge method, and I keep it plugged in whenever I'm at my laptop). Is it possible that this has something to do with it? The USB connection interfering with the upgrade? Has anyone here successfully upgraded while USB connected?

".......Since I had *nothing* installed on my phone this second time around, I'm pretty sure that it had nothing to do with any "bad apps". However, the one thing in common both times was that I had my phone plugged into my laptop via the USB cable (it's my typical recharge method, and I keep it plugged in whenever I'm at my laptop). Is it possible that this has something to do with it? The USB connection interfering with the upgrade? Has anyone here successfully upgraded while USB connected?"

I doubt it, however I know on some of the other LG Phones that the USB connection seems to interfere with the Cell Data transmissions. Unfortunately I don't know how to prompt the OTA update to contact your phone again so we can try it...

Well, I'll give it a couple days and see if I get notified again, otherwise I might go ahead with the reset method again. Thanks.

On Androidforums.com a couple [eo[;e have posted the updates to DL as well as very in depth instructions on how to install.

Yeah, I saw that... And provided those are the actual final release cab's, I might go that route as well.

So I'm back running V6 again. The link to the instructions is here [url]http://androidforums.com/lg-ally/124574-ally-v9-sw-update.html#post1233647[url]

Pro,
Can you talk your guys into putting the V8 update back up on the manual updater. I think it would solve the issue for the people not getting it OTA.

If you are not getting the OTA notice Do a hard reset and then once it reboots open dialer and put in *#*#checkin#*#* (*#*#2433546#*#*). That should do a force check for the update.

Is there a list of these *#*# sequences anywhere? I'm intrigued by their potential.

Posted by gndmepyon on 26 Jul 2010 16:48 PM:

Pro,

Can you talk your guys into putting the V8 update back up on the manual updater. I think it would solve the issue for the people not getting it OTA.

Good Idea! Let me run it past some people and see what they say.

Posted by kdavidson on 27 Jul 2010 07:31 AM:

Is there a list of these *#*# sequences anywhere? I'm intrigued by their potential.

I'm sure there is somewhere prolly in the man pages of the SDK. I happen to get that one from death2all110 over at androidforums.com