I would not consider myself an early adopter, neither am I a laggard, but somewhere in the middle for software upgrades. So when I heard that my Samsung Galaxy S4 would be getting Android Lollipop in December 2014, I was over the moon. What made me envious was that my colleagues with LG, Nexus and Sony devices were getting this update over the holidays.

So patiently I waited stalking the net for news on when my S4 would get an OTA update but no avail, 4 months later I am still feeling left out till, I found this post S4 Stock Lollipop came up in my Google+ feed (yes I use that) which led me to look for options of manually updating my phone to an official stock android for Samsung phones.

This led me to a guide How to get Android 5.0.1 Lollipop on the Galaxy S4  which walked me through the process.

75 minutes later, I had Lollipop 5.0.1 installed on my S4, now to understand how the new notifications & other enhancements can be leveraged for my day to day use most especially the battery life improvements.

My biggest worry was bricking the phone, so I followed the instructions to the letter, and ensured the laptop running Odin was on UPS just in case of power outage.