Last Updated on April 12, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake
If you are subscribed to the Sprint carrier network, you will be receiving a new Android 4.2.2 over the air update called 1.54.651.10, and it comes with the main priority of improving the network connectivity. It is a warmly welcomed update by many who didn’t realize that the poor service was due to their phone network letting them down. It will put an end to people blaming the weather and searching around the home for items that could be blocking their signal strength. There will be a few other improvements that are all to do with the software improvements and stability side of things from what we can tell. If you upgrade to this version and notice any features, please leave a comment and tell us what you found.
Networks are a peculiar thing, but we won’t get into that now. Let’s just say they can be rather complex and luckily for anybody who was caught in a dangerous place with Sprint recently on this years flagship for HTC things will now be looking up.
It is an incremental update that occurs at different times for each depending on what country you are in, what date you bought a smartphone and a number of other factors taken into account that make it next to impossible to predict when it will be coming for you. That is unless you knew the whole world, and it’s safe to safe that most of us don’t. There’s no distinctive pattern of buttons that you can press that will make it arrive quicker for you. What we can assure you is that it will ultimately find it’s way around to your notifications and for some of you the day will be today. The unlucky ones will have to wait potentially a number of weeks. If you are suffering from paranoia or ants in your pants you can check manually by navigating to Settings > About phone > Software updates > Check now, and it will search if the new firmware is available for you to install.
There is no official changelog so we are sure this will not be a big update. We do not expect it to carry many MB along with it (under 60) so if you want to download and install it using the mobile data plan you can do that. However, the carrier and we always recommend a stable WiFi connection so that the download occurs more securely.
It also pays to backup the device fully before updating any software whether it be over the air or using the manual file. There’s always a slight chance of data loss so therefore it is wise to use an application from the Google Play Store such as Helium to backup apps and other essential data. If you are running out of space Google offer a service called Google Drive that makes for a great place to store data or you can sync the contacts to the Google account. Of course, there is always the choice of using the 32 GB of built-in storage instead, and that is excellent as long as you have some left. The Android OS uses 8 GB of that already after it is finished, so that only leaves 24 GB of space the end user has to use when brand new. If you require additional space try one of the microSD, microSDHC and microSDXC card options available that give a maximum additional 128 GB of space
The M8 comes with a 2600 mAh that disperses 20 hours talk time and considering how new this smartphone is the battery should still be in good working order. I would save at least 50% battery power before starting this update, and that should be enough to see you safely through the installation process without any worries.
If you’re into software, there’s further good news. Today we wrote that Android 4.4.3 Kitkat was out via CM11 custom Rom for this handset, and if you do customize, you might be interested n that. The other good news is that I’m predicting a 4.4.3 to hit this handset as an official software release very soon. It will still be worth upgrading to this now though, especially if you are facing any of the problems mentioned that it is specially designed to fix.