April 24, 2012, 9:24 AM — The Samsung Galaxy S II was supposed to be David Petty's dream phone. He'd watched the smartphone market for a couple of years, and finally pulled the trigger on his first Android handset when AT&T launched the Galaxy S II last October. For the first few months, it was perfect.
Everything changed when AT&T delivered Android 2.3.6--a minor update that included some tweaks to the user interface, but little else--to Petty's phone in January.
Suddenly, his phone wouldn't last more than 6 hours on a charge, even with light use. As Petty learned from fellow Android users online, a Wi-Fi bug was thrashing the Galaxy S II's battery life.
"It's at a point where, if I have Wi-Fi on, I have a battery widget on the front screen, and I can watch the battery drop, just sitting here," Petty, an environmental researcher based in Indianapolis, told PCWorld.
Petty isn't alone in his problems, and the Galaxy S II isn't the only Android phone burned by a bad update.
Here is a sampling of complaints we found in various online forums about Android phone OS updates gone wrong:
