Updates extremely slow

Dubz

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is just me, but are updates supposed to take an unusually long time to install? I'm talking the main notification for updates can take several hours, and after the reboot, app optimization can also tape upwards of 2 hours to complete, during which the phone is rendered completely unusable.

Is there something I'm doing wrong, or a way to speed this up? Normally Android (at least on my Samsung prior to) took about 20 minutes total to install, reboot, and optimize apps. Larger updates could take closer to one hour possibly. GrapheneOS tends to take 3-5 times longer for some reason.

unwat

Dubz

You're not doing anything wrong. It's super slow slow for me too. From this Android article.

With A/B updates, the opposite is true; because the user is still using their device, as little impact as possible is the goal, so the update is deliberately slow.

Overall, this method of updating is "faster" in that the phone is out of commission for a shorter amount of time since most of the update process is done in the background while still allowing you to use your phone.

This method is also safer because if an update fails for some reason the phone will switch back to the other partition, effectively rolling back an update.

Dubz

I should add the latest update went as one would expect it to, reboot wise. It was down and back within 5 minutes. The actual download/install/finalizing while in use took its time, but that's not really intrusive so I don't mind that.

brambler

Dubz The optimizing apps after reboot is fast for me because I do not have many apps installed, so that's not my main concern. It's the validating and finalizing portion of the update process that takes the longest time for me even when I'm not doing anything on the device. This isn't something I'm used to coming from other custom roms, but those roms have to reboot to recovery to do their updates so that's probably why.

Dubz

unwat That answers the notification/active update, but the app optimization is where the concern lies more. The notification might be slightly annoying as I'm not used to it, but as you said it's not really affecting my use. It's the app optimization that can run for a couple hours sometimes as I cannot use my phone at all in this timeframe.

unwat

Dubz

Here are two different threads where people were asking about this as well, which I've linked below. Based on what others have said in those two threads, it seems the OS is recompiling some stuff so everything is more optimized.

This part takes a long time sometimes for me too, but don't recall it ever taking more than 15 minutes for me before. Maybe you have a lot of apps installed? Anyway, if you do a web search on this, you'll find tons of other people with other devices or other OSes say their phones can optimize for 1+ hours. This optimization is not unique to GrapheneOS.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/2684-optimizing-apps-during-update-takes-very-long-time
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/2368-optimizing-apps-on-startup-taking-ages

Dubz

So the last couple of updates were actually really fast for me, so I figured maybe it was just a fluke. However, I just rebooted my phone about 45 minutes ago for the latest update and it's just over halfway done optimizing the same apps (229/374). It's not an insane amount, but not minimalistic either. I even plugged it in and put a fan on it to ensure it wasn't power/heat related, but it's still just chugging away...

Dubz

Almost an hour and it finally finished up. Seems like it got a little quicker towards the end. Not sure if there's something I need to do to optimize this more, or if it's just depending on the update.

unwat

Dubz

If the updates really bother you, you can consider sideloading. I read somewhere online that Pixels running Stock don't do the optimizing apps part when updates are sideloaded.