I have a 2012 Nexus 7 32gb 3G and have had serious freezing issues for the last 6 months (one month out of warranty!) and I’m almost at the bin it and buy a Hudl 2 stage. Obviously, I can unfreeze it with a soft reset, but performing this up to 10 times a day can be a bit wearing!

I’ve tried all of the following:

Performed numerous hard factory resets
Removed all apps, reintroducing them one at a time
Performed a cache partition wipe

None of them worked, so I then picked up a used motherboard on eBay and put that in. Brilliant move, I thought. It worked perfectly for about a fortnight and then slowly but surely the freezing problem returned, and I’m right back to the beginning.

All the Nexus/Android forums have been no help, so I’m looking to the collective wisdom of STW to prevent me from taking a sledgehammer to it.

seems youve done everything (and more) that I would have. If you’ve changed the mobo and it’s still knackered then you probably arent going to solve it tweaking anything else as you’ll be chasing an intermittent hardware fault around the place like a usb short when hot, or mic socket short.

Call it a day, and for £110 grab a Hudl2.

Ive just tidied by gen1 N7 for Jr for Xmas having got v happy with the Hudl2 I bought myself to replace it.

I’m stoner’s stalker so to be like him, I have also got a Hudl2 for Xmas and will be retiring my 2012 N7 for similar reasons. Shame as it was great until recently.

nemesis – I did manage that roll back to 4.4.4 successfully in the end, and it’s as good as new. But I wouldnt take it back for the Hudl2 now Ive had that for a while.

Only gripe about the hudl2 is that it doesnt have the magnetic sensor that tells it when the case is opened (or the Tesco case doesnt have the magnet in it). My N7 wakes up when you open the case – you dont have to press the button like you do on the hudl2. Unless Ive missed a setting somewhere.

I’m still on 4.4.4 – still get hanging though. Still haven’t had the Lollipop upgrade appear either.

As it goes, I didn’t like the magnetic sensor thing – found that I instinctively hit the power button even when I had the case on (I only used the case for travelling)

buy an iPad ?

My N7 (1st gen) has been like this for a few months now. Factory reset usually solves it for a couple of weeks then it starts to lag and freeze again. Using the laptop more these days as a result.

Maybe Santa will bring a current gen N7 or a Hudl2 (I DID ask him very nicely).

EDIT. Never even got to 4.4.4 on mine – every time I tried to install the update it failed so I’ve given up trying…

I always thought the traditional winter solution for a frozen Nexus 7 was to piss on it.

I’m guessing this doesn’t work as well on tablets as it does on hub gears though.

Still, could be worth a shot.

Thanks, Stoner et al, for confirming my fears. Given that the replacement motherboard didn’t cure the fault, could I safely put both boards up for sale?

Not sure how much help this will be now youve changed a motherboard,but I had freezing issues with a nexus 10, they replaced it for a refurbed unit even though I was way outside warranty.
The only thing with this unit is,its locked to an earlier version of android,something like 4.2 or whatever it is,but I can live with that.
So,if you can get it back to its original state and they won’t know you’ve tampered with it,get in touch with them and see what they say.

Buy a Hudl (or another Nexus) and throw what’s left on Ebay – you might see £20 back for it as spares or repair..

After doing the cache partition wipe turn off all animations under developer options.
After moving to lollipop mine was a bag of spanners but this seems to have helped significantly.

Mine was ready for the bin until recently I installed lagfix (fstrim). This required rooting to run, which I was reluctant to do but seeing as it was unusable anyway I gave it a go.
This causes a data wipe I recall, then I could run lagtrim. This has resolved all the issues & the tablet is perfect again.

Hang on, it’s a trim issue? I thought trim was built into Android since, uh KitKat at least? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

*goes to google*

Yeah, trim is supposed to run automatically in Android’s maintenance window (TL;DR – leave it on charge overnight). I do wonder whether it was the wipe that fixed your issue rather than lagtrim.

In related news, I just spotted this on Wikipedia WRT Android versions,

5.0.2 December 19, 2014
Currently only available for the Nexus 7 2012 Wi-Fi model, with no changelog provided by Google

… A new build came out for the original N7 four days ago. (Irritatingly, I don’t seem to have been offered 5.0.1 yet even, anyone else got it on an N7)?

Bingo.

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/android-5-0-2-factory-images-nexus-7-wifi/

Some other changes related to NAND have also been pushed. Fstrim, introduced in Android 4.3, caused some serious issues on Lollipop. According to this log provided by XDA Recognized Developer cybojenix, devices turned off for the night had problems with fstrim being launched at all. Google addressed the issue and devices with slow NAND should now have a noticeable performance boost.

good news for those that have stuck with lolli. I bailed.

Just had 5.0.1 OTA to my N4 though. No change noticed, but only a 16.7Mb patch.

Not on the OTA servers yet AFAIK.

I’m going to go get some lunch, then I’ll have a punt at bricking sideloading it onto mine.

I sideloaded 5.0 onto my Nexus 4, the 5.0.1 update came through over the weekend. But my 7 is still on v4.4.4, I’ve checked for updates but it can’t find any. Anyone else stuck on ‘old’ android?

Well, I’ve sideloaded 5.0.2. Just waiting for it to restart. Taking its sweet time.

ther kernal re-compile on N4 for 5.0.2 took quite a while too (only did it an hour or so ago)

Ack, one thing I wasn’t planning on was a full wipe, bugger.

what did you use for the sideload? Wugs?

OTA didnt wipe for 5.0.2

adb and the image direct from Google.

It’s not the end of the world, there’s no irreplaceable local data on there; it’s just an arseache putting all the desktop icons etc back where I want them. Should really look into a backup for that at some point.

perhaps you left a wipe setting on in adb?

It’s a script that came with the image. Foolishly I just fired it rather than reading it first. ho hum.

Nexus7 1st gen and no OTA 5.0.1 update here either. It’s a total bag of laggy spanners on KitKat now and has been getting worse ever since the apps started updating to the lollipop versions.

My limited google-fu seems to be blaming it on the read/write speeds of the storage.

Anyone else stuck on ‘old’ android?

1st gen Nexus 7 here and still on Android 4.4.4 I recall a few weeks ago there was a notification for an OTA update. I presumed this was Android 5.0 but I declined to install it at the time in case of initial bugs/build issues etc.

However, when I try and search for a software update the N7 tells me everything is up to date, so I guess I’m stuck with 4.4.4 for now Though by the sounds of it thats not necessarily a bad thing…

Ms Haze has this on her N7 1st gen, it’s about 2 years old and needs a reset every month or so.

I’m sick of doing it to be honest, it’s just time wasted that could be better spent reading about tyres and stuff on here.

Bought her an iPad for Christmas so hopefully problem solved…

Aaaand, that’s the last app to be reinstalled. Rebooting, then we’ll see how it is.

1st gen Nexus 7 here and still on Android 4.4.4 I recall a few weeks ago there was a notification for an OTA update. I presumed this was Android 5.0 but I declined to install it at the time in case of initial bugs/build issues etc.

However, when I try and search for a software update the N7 tells me everything is up to date, so I guess I’m stuck with 4.4.4 for now Though by the sounds of it thats not necessarily a bad thing…

Same for me, except a 2nd gen. Kept getting the 5.0.1 reminder, but wanted to wait a few days to see how stability was, and install at a convenient time for me. Now there doesn’t appear to be the option.

Factory reset.
Go to Computer Exchange.
Get 50-60 quid for it.
Buy a Hudl.

That’s what I did.

My 2012 nexus 7 was the same for a couple of months; laggy, freezing, crashing etc to the point where I wanted to frisbee the thing into the sea. Other half got me an iPad as a birthday/Xmas present earlier in the month. So much better.
Best just to give up on it, tried everything there was to try on the nexus, but it never stayed good for more than a short while.

Well,

It’s early days yet, but 5.0.2 seems to have fixed it.

Thanks for the updates Cougar – please keep ’em coming in terms of whether 5.0.2 helps. Upgraded (!?) my first gen N7 to lollipop and altho it hasn’t quite got to useless stage it has been frustratingly slow & laggy. Hoping that the OTA update comes soon and if yours is fixed then that’ll be good news.

As I understood it, thanks to the potential for disaster 5.0.1 never made it out to 2012 N7’s. That’s why 5.0.2 is N7 only. Good to hear that it works, will risk it when it arrives now.

2012 nexus 7.

Side loaded 5.0.2 yesterday. Cleared cache at same time to make sure.

Initial thoughts are that it is has fixed some of the problems which were affecting me. No more reboots. Browsing in chrome is better, less lagging and smoother scrolling.

That all might be placebo. However what isn’t is that the recent apps switcher actually is usuable,which it was not in 5.0