Version Update VRUDMI1 Issues

[WebsterBob]

I was "forced" to update my S4 last week because I was sick of getting that pop up dialog in the morning about installing it. Thinking it would be a good idea to get the latest and greatest update. Up to that point, I had decent battery life - pretty much lasted all day and was pretty satisfied with the performance.

Immediately after the update, I got some dialog indicating that there was a problem with the install. I can't remember what it said but I was thinking this can't be good. Also, I'm not sure why Verizon would be pushing out VRUMDI1 when VRUAME7 is available.

Issue 1:

I immediately noticed that half of my home screen app icons were grayed out. The apps were able to launch OK. The apps on the Apps screen were still present. It took an hour for me to manually restore the icons on the home screens.  It appears that it only affected the apps that were moved onto my external SD card.

Issue 2:

I then noticed that my battery was warmer than usual and the battery didn't last as long. I can see the battery slowly discharge right before my eyes. I probably got about 4 hours of usage before it needed life support. I noticed that GoogleServices was draining most of my battery life.  Usually, it's Screen that's been the top hitter with about 60% battery usage. I then ran OS Monitor to see what processes were chewing up the CPU time. UserDictionary was grabbing 45% of the CPU time.  I cleared the UserDictionary cache and disabled it, rebooted. The new CPU hog was now SearchApplicationsProvider with 45% CPU usage. Did the same thing with SearchApplicationsProvider and rebooted. Now it was LogsProvider that was the hog. Then it was ContactsProvider. This wasn't getting anywhere, it seemed like the next available GoogleServices process was eager to be the CPU hog.  On a whim, I decided to reboot my S4 into Safe mode to see if  the processes were still hogging the CPU. They weren't, everything looked normal. OK. I  rebooted again to it's normal state and low and behold, everything look normal no CPU hogs , no battery drain issues. the disabled processes were re-enabled on the reboot.  Everything still looks good after 2 days. Battery life lasts all day now, I could probably get 1.5 days out of a charge.

In summary:

Not sure, if what I did works for all the similar problems users are experiencing with this update but give it a try. You might boot it into safe mode first to see if it fixes the problem. You can get it into Safe mode by repeatedly pressing the left button while powering on your phone until you see a small Safe mode icon at the lower left of your display. In this mode, apps that you installed will NOT be available. get it out of safe mode be rebooting your phone.

Finally:

I give Verizon a big fat F for this upgrade. With all it's problems, there is no way that it should have been released to the public.  Verizon should NOT expect their paying customers to also QA and debug their releases.  I hope that VRUAME7 was done properly.  And when is Verizon releasing Android 4.3 anyways?  Or are they going to leapfrog to 4.4 ?

[Klue]

Android 4.3 is now available OTA.

[Ann154]

The earlier update might also need to be installed before the Android 4.3 update can be installed.