Does my 1020 need a factory reset?

[gtbuzz]

I'm rocking a 1020 with 8.1.1 DP and Cyan (on AT&T, but don't think that matters). Ever since doing DP for 8.1, I feel the user experience has degraded quite a bit from the stock 8.0 days. Getting the final 8.1 build and Cyan helped a little, but it's still not what I would consider a pleasant experience. I've got a GS5 for work, and aside from the fact that I prefer the WP UI vs Android, I hate to admit is more of a pleasure to use. Some of the issues:

Lag, lag and more lag

• This was barely an issue back in the 8.0 days, but I'm now constantly faced with a barrage of "Loading" and "Resuming" screens. Nearly every app does it, but if you ask me, it's flat out inexcusable to see it in the core apps such as email or SMS. Sometimes it'll be only 2-3 seconds of watching that screen, but other times it'll be north of 10 seconds
• The graphics when scrolling on the home screen are no longer smooth like they used to be (haven't really been smooth since the 8.0 days; 8.1 final and Cyan improved it, but not much)
• Camera can take upwards of 30 seconds to initialize. This is no exaggeration. Most of the time it's still around 10-15 seconds, but on occasion it takes far far longer. I've missed quite a few shots as a result of this.
• When I go back to the home screen, the transparent tiles on the home screen are sometimes "blank" for a while. Takes several seconds for it to actually get drawn with the content. Until that happens, it's just a blank window into my background
• Multi-tasking windows don't always draw. If I hold down the back button to view other open apps, about 10% of the time, I'll only get the names at the bottom with no view of the app itself. Sometimes they'll pop in after 10 seconds or so, other times, never at all

Browsing with IE is flat out awful now

• I thought release of 8.1 (or 8.1.1, I forget which one now) was supposed to improve rendering of websites, but my experience has been the exact opposite
• Kind of ties in with the lag issue, but many websites take quite a bit longer to draw now
• It crashes. A lot. Usually with what I'd consider more "complicated" websites, but I feel this is something that should be a rare occurrence. In fact, I can no longer visit Engadget because it crashes IE 100% of the time, without fail
• IE will often scroll to the top of the page, randomly. It's very frustrating when I'm halfway down a page reading something and then BAM. We've moved you up to the top again! Happens again and again and again
• The click event seems to be WAY too sensitive. When I'm wanting to just swipe up and scroll, for some reason the vast majority of the time IE registers that as a click event if I happened to touch anywhere near a hyper link. Sure, I could just try to avoid hyperlinks, but with more and more websites becoming touch friendly and defining entire div blocks to go to a link, this is rather difficult, if not impossible
• Pinned sites never update
• Scrolling results in a lot of lag. No longer smooth. VS other apps as well as the home screen, IE is by far the worst
• This is perhaps a side-effect of emulating an Android browser now, but I'm seeing a LOT more pop-up ads. Also, I'm seeing a lot of notifications on websites to just go and download the Android app. Wonder if MS shot themselves in the foot with this one by making it seem like there's no more WP browsers visiting websites

Occasional random reset

• Now, granted, I still find myself doing a reset of my 1020 even with all these problems less than my GS5, it's about once a week or every other week where the device just hangs, as opposed to maybe once or twice ever with WP8.0

Battery life is atrocious

• Used to be, I could get a day pretty comfortably with regular usage. I'm not talking about games, just email, sms, Whatsapp and web surfing (no videos
• Now, I'm lucky if I get half a day with just light usage that's mostly web surfing
• I've disabled nearly all background processes, but according to battery saver, it's IE that's sucking up the juice. Perhaps this is more of an IE issue

I do a soft reset about once every other day hoping that will clear things up. Nope. About once a week I do a hard reset with volume-down / power. That doesn't seem to help either. About the only thing I can think of at this point is to just wipe the phone and start over (I guess on 8.1.1 DP and Cyan). I've tried to put this off as long as possible because I want to avoid having to set things up again and losing progress on the vast majority of games that don't support backup. Does anyone think this might help the problems I'm having or is it a fools errand? Really don't want to put forth the effort if there's not even a chance it'll help and this experience is just par for the course now.

I've been a big fan of WP since the beginning because of the fresh look and one major thing - it just worked. Sure, the app situation is still kind of crummy, but when mostly what I do is email and surf the web, it's not a big deal. I hate to say it, but as things sit, that's no longer the case for me. In fact, when I used to hand people my phone, most people would be impressed with the speed and fluidity of the OS (especially compared to Android). Nowadays, most people just hand it back in utter frustration. Sure, the 1020 isn't a cutting edge device, but for what was essentially a flagship device only 12 months ago, I really expected better than this.

 

[mjrtoo]

Quite the novel, but I'd say yes, its worth a shot. There have been a lot of reports of people.having issues and a full factory reset has helped.

 

[gtbuzz]

Quite the novel, but I'd say yes, its worth a shot. There have been a lot of reports of people.having issues and a full factory reset has helped.

Yeah, when I first started the thread, it was more an inquiry, but it really did manage to turn into a rant, eh?

I guess at this point, I've really got nothing to lose in doing a reset. I'll try it out and report back.