My smart phone (Samsung S7) is prodding me to upgrade the OS. Is this something I want to do? Will it improve the phone or make lots of annoying changes?

Apologies if this is an obvious question, I’m a bit new to this! 🙂

Been our for a while for other phones, happy with it on the nexus

Thanks! Good to know! 🙂

Did my tablet the other week. Painless, can’t say as I’ve noticed a vast difference one way or the other.

Sounds good enough to me! Upgrade button pressed 🙂

Fear not. I was in the beta program for Nougat on the S7 and from the first build I got to the final release it’s been flawless as an OS, do think the battery life may have taken a bit of a hit. But overall quite a bit better than Marshmallow imo.

But overall quite a bit better than Marshmallow imo.

In what way? Bar the split screen stuff, I can’t see a difference.

https://www.android.com/versions/nougat-7-0/
It seems the quick reply to texts arrived – quite a nice neat little feature, improved quick settings, more improvements to now, but just general nice to haves, no need to start a 30 page fanboi epic just keeps it ticking over.

Find it smoother, faster, less jerky (there was not much before but smoother now), better notifications quick settings etc. More polished all round really.

Installed it a few days ago on my S7 edge. Seems OK so far, but the 1st attempt at install seemed to fail half way through.

As for battery, I’d actually say mine has improved ever so slightly. Maybe by a couple of hours. I’ve noticing i’m finishing the day around 20-30% rather than 10-20%.

There also seem to be a few wee tweaks which make things little quicker / better thought out. I’ve noticed when I tap on something, its offering choices of the next step which are more intuitive than before. I’m not a fanboy of either Android or Apple over the other, but I would say that when I’m using the wife’s iPhone, i’m feeling that its beginning to slip behind a little. ( imho )

So yeah, upgrade it.

Installed OnePlus’s Oxygen OS 4.0 on my OP3 which their upgrade to Nougat. Can’t find anything that I’d actually consider an improvement in the new OS. The split screen stuff is nice, but can’t see myself using it.

OnePlus have however made some nasty changes to how notifications work (e.g. https://www.change.org/p/oneplus-bring-back-the-default-vibrations-in-op2-and-op3-3t-letusvibrate )

These problems are with Oxygen rather than Android itself, but I’m planning to downgrade to get away from them.

Battery life should have got better, it was one of the few interesting sounding changes. My Shield tablet using 7 still drains much quicker while sat idle than my iPad does. I’m not sure why they’ve always had such an issue with it.

Sadly no OTA update for my Galaxy S7 yet, no real issues with 6.0.1 though for me to go and hunt it out.

Ok so I’ve installed and I’ll be honest I don’t like it. It has gotten rid of some of my favourite features and I’m struggling to see why the new ones are better, and it has started to run less smoothly and slower (no surprises there!) So is there a way to go back to Marshmallow?

I’ve got it now on my Sony Z5, the notifications are much better, I don’t like the small apps access it was easier before.
On the whole it all seems fine, messaging is much clearer now and it appears to be stable.

What’s gone? Had to know what’s missing as Samsung may have fiddled with it.

Just been offered the opportunity to install Nougat on my Samsung A3. I’m failing to see any compelling reason to do so from this thread. I’ll try this afternoon and report back….

Just installed it on my S7 edge, seems ok, not much material difference as far as I can tell. The quick settings icons have changed, as has the settings section in general, but that just layout/look & feel changes.

I like the windowing features (only ~30 years after windows were introduced on computers), can see them being useful.

Battery life seems ever so slightly better , I maybe have 10% more battery life at the end of the day compared to marshmallow, but its hard to be exact as the usage of the phone differs day to day.

Noticed today that the Nougat 7.0 update is now available on my Moto G4. Anyone tried updating? I’m always a bit wary.

still waiting for the Nougat update for my S6…but as its on O2 by the time they release it, i’ll be ready for an upgrade anyway

Available for my Moto G4 now, I’ll give it a go over the weekend.

Installed OnePlus’s Oxygen OS 4.0 on my OP3 which their upgrade to Nougat. Can’t find anything that I’d actually consider an improvement in the new OS. The split screen stuff is nice, but can’t see myself using it.

OnePlus have however made some nasty changes to how notifications work (e.g. https://www.change.org/p/oneplus-bring-back-the-default-vibrations-in-op2-and-op3-3t-letusvibrate )

These problems are with Oxygen rather than Android itself, but I’m planning to downgrade to get away from them.

I’ve also found that the update has removed options on my OP3. Now I have the “silent” mode set to vibrate and I switch between normal and silent, so I’ve effectively lost the DND mode because I never use it. I’d much rather have DND vibrate with no sound and then silent neither vibrate nor make a sound but that’s not an option. It’s not enough of an issue to have bothered downgrading though.

installing just now on the back of this thread, better not break my phone! 😆

seems fine, not much different really.

notifications pull down menu is much better.

Can you put this on any android phone? My Sony currently has 5.1.1

I’ve also found that the update has removed options on my OP3

The other thing that’s been broken is the ability to suppress persistent notifications from certain apps from the lockscreen. I’ve got a couple of apps that I have running all the time and have persistent notifications to tell you that they’re running. On the old OS you can suppress these pointless notifications, but the new OS has removed this option. Combined with the broken volume control, I find notifications pretty much unusable in the new OS. I’ve now downgraded and can honestly say that there’s nothing that I miss from the newer version.

I’ve also found that the update has removed options on my OP3. Now I have the “silent” mode set to vibrate and I switch between normal and silent, so I’ve effectively lost the DND mode because I never use it. I’d much rather have DND vibrate with no sound and then silent neither vibrate nor make a sound but that’s not an option. It’s not enough of an issue to have bothered downgrading though

I wasn’t impressed at all when they did this… However.. after a day I actually quite like the new functionality. Obviously only applies to op phones as it’s an oxygen os feature.

I’ve been really happy with the nougat update. The fact you can make everything smaller is lovely. Means STW doesn’t have ridiculously large text on crappy mobile view.

Think I’ve got it on my Z5 Compact…works fine…however I’ve no idea about split screens….whassat?

Each update requires a couple of tweaks to set everything back to how I like it, but each update differs…on the whole, each update is a good thing.

My battery life is worse, now having to charge every 26 hours but this is due to having a SmartWatch connected via Bluetooth all the time, so the phone is doing more background stuff.

I’m not normally that fussed about android updates other than security patches.

That’s what’s annoying as after a few years it just won’t get any more updates so the only option is get a newer phone or put a more up to date ROM on it which is a fair bit of faffing.