Android phones, apps and tablets

I managed to put the OTA 4.4 on my Nexus 7 manually without bricking it, but only after many many hours of timewasting using 2 woefully incomplete "step by step guides" that omitted important steps like installing ADB drivers when loading the SDK.

Has anybody found a decent alternative to Latitude that doesn't drain your battery?

We find that G+ locations just doesn't work very well. Sometimes it will decide not update our locations for a few days randomly.

About to try updating my N7 now...

Hmn. That didn't go well :/

So, I got as far as getting the tablet to "waiting for adb sideload" which is where I discovered that adb can't see the device. So I was trying to figure out how to reboot the tablet, and it seem to have powered off and won't come back on...

Well, when I say powered off, If I put the usb cable in my PC detects it, so it's "on", but no display...

Can you boot into recovery mode?

Or run "adb devices" - what's it say?

Ah, got that sorted... I had to hold power button and volume down for about 10 seconds and it gave me the boot loader. It's just booted up cleanly so that's a relief...

I think I need to figure out if I've got the right USB drives installed for ADB etc... using windows defaults at the moment.

adb devices was blank before I had that little mini-scare...

OK, so. Sitting in windows, N7 detected via USB in windows but not by adb (adb devices is blank). I have some USB drivers to try out...

They were in the SDK, you might have to look for them elsewhere. I haz custom drivers from some ROM site.

Right, getting somewhere... there was the google USB driver in the SDK that wasn't installed. Done that, Windows has picked up and extra n7 device, accepted certificate etc on n7 and it's showing up in ADB at last :)

Here goes nothing...

Argh!

Boot into recovery again... no devices in adb. FFS.

Aha...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2148019

Had to install yet another driver... "ADB Composite driver"...

The device then showed up as an ADB sideload device.

Updating...

Right, seems to be working...

It's now optimising apps so fingers crossed :)

All done. Anti-climax.

In other news. Possible camera API in the works. Sort of makes sense, seeing as how the N5 camera app seems just a bit clunky...

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-is-working-on-a-new-android-camera-api-supports-camera-raw/

CasaSteve has just recreated my Sunday morning perfectly :)

Not really had a chance to play about much since updating. I assume there's benefits to updating but not noticed anything supermegaomgawesome as yet.

After playing with the new N7 I'm impressed. The screen and sound quality are massively improved, a little suprised they didn't go with the docking pin out however.

The replacement N5 works on work PC and home PC.

Conclusion: LG QC is SH IT

Has anyone with the new Nexus 7 been able to update the 'easy' way yet?

Which Nexus are you on about? The N5 obviously comes with current kitkat. N4 no OTA yet. The N7 (both new and old) are getting OTA but it's still rolling out slowly.

I side loaded today onto my N7 2013, and after some frustration it went OK :)

Sorry forgot to write 7 there would have made things alot clearer there

Not really had a chance to play about much since updating. I assume there's benefits to updating but not noticed anything supermegaomgawesome as yet.

keyboard has emoji

thats about it

Google Now is 'always on' in 4.4 apparently
.