Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Galaxy S3 4.3 Jelly Bean Update Annoyance

If you are looking for steps to stop that annoying download complete notification, skip to Instructions section.
There have been a lot of issues with the 4.3 Jelly Bean update pushed out so at some point Samsung decided to pull back the update and work on fixing them.  But I was surprised when AT&T pushed the 4.3 update nonetheless.  I didn't want to be guinea pig or spend hours fixing annoyances, so I delayed the update, but, not very unlike Windows ~~~aarrgghhh~~~ it kept insisting every few hours that I update the darn phone.  The only respite being God-sent postpone button that allowed me to postpone the update for up to 1, 2, 4 or 8 hours, I selected the max duration, 8 hours.  After doing that 2-3 times, today morning, to my horror, when I got up and checked my mobile I noticed there was a subtle difference in my lock-screen's appearance.  Even before unlocking it dawned upon me that I have gotten the dreaded upgrade.  Instead of my early morning routine that helps me shake off the slumber, it was this squeamish feeling of being violated that jolted me back from sleepiness.
I haven't used it more than an hour, so I can't say what I like and what I hate about this update, or what are the annoyances, except one...  There's one that's breaking everybody's resolve to NOT swear and that is: randomly showing notification that a file has been downloaded.  Now, this file, in all the cases is either not recognizable or was downloaded years ago, actually in mobile-years, eons ago! So, of course when you tap on it, you get back an error something to the effect of "Cannot find this file".
After Google'ing, I figured this was a very common annoyance and people suggested "Clearing Cache" to get rid of this.  But no one actually shared detailed steps how to do so.  Or more importantly, "which" cache to clear!  After some trial and error I figured how to do it.  And I thought of making a quick post to help others rid themselves of this irritating behavior.
Instructions to Clear Cache:
  1. Pull down the notification center when you have an icon notifying you of some download
  2. Tap-n-Hold on the filename that appears
  3. An "App Info" menu will pop up
  4. Tap on that "App Info" menu
  5. It takes you to Android's standard interface from where you can manage the applications
  6. Just hit "Clear Data", it will warn you, just say ok and proceed with clearing data
  7. VoilĂ !  You will not be bothered with this again, unless you REALLY download something
I couldn't find this app whose data I cleared from Application Manager, so I take it must be some system internal app that's hidden from Application Manager.  And I didn't know if what I was doing was the real solution, so I didn't even take any screenshots to help, but at least I remembered the steps.

Edit: The app is called "Download Manager" and actually is visible if you are patient enough to scroll through "All" apps tab in application manager.  Here's the screenshot.  Blogger is not letting me upload images, so here's the link to screenshot: Screenshot-Clear Download Manager's Cache.

Edit: The BIGGEST annoyance so far has been random battery drains, just yesterday it dropped off from 100% to 85% in less than 5 minutes, the phone's back went warm AND this was while in "power saving" mode!  I fired up Elixir2 and noticed most CPU has been hogged by Samsung's wretched KNOX.  My battery is lasting less than half a day in power saving mode (and I don't have any bells-n-whistles enabled, aka FB, Twitter, Email notifications, etc.).
This is just pathetic. 
Moral: When will these idiots (the ones defining upgrade/update experiences) realize that there are some of us who DON'T want to be forced to upgrade, especially when there are many known unresolved issues with the update.  And if you MUST annoy with hourly reminders, at least don't FORCE upgrade while I'm asleep and can't baby-sit your f!@#$ing notifications! ~~~sigh~~~ There's no dearth of idiots in this world, none whatsoever!

Is Samsung becoming the new Yahoo!/HP, refer to my previous post: Stop Writing Crappy Software