Google Play Services update crashes phone

[boldcompany]

Running cm-13.0-20161109-UNOFFICIAL-LegacyXperia-satsuma on ST17i.

Google Play Services keeps trying to update itself. Whenever it does, during install the phone becomes unresponsive and crashes. Eventually goes to black screen with amber notification light. Only way to recover is to pull battery and restart.

1. Is this build not compatible with automatic Play Services updates?
2. If Play Services updates are needed, what's the best way to do it?

[s-ilic]

I have the exact same problem on Urushi (ST18)... Any idea on how to solve it ?

[niks255]

Obviously Google play services is a proprietary piece of software, which we cannot fix.
The issue you're facing is due to AOT compilation of ART. Hardware of your phone just isn't powerful enough to process such large package.
What you can do is flash Google apps package with the newest play services.

[s-ilic]

Thanks for the tip !
I found the latest GApps package and tried to flash it with CWM, but it failed with a "set_metadata_recursive: some changes failed"... Any idea what's happening ?
Thanks !

[niks255]

What package are you flashing?
If it's from opengapps, then you can't flash it because they don't support CWM.

[s-ilic]

I downloaded the arm 6.0.1 package from here : https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/software/app-minimal-gapps-gapps-lp-20150107-1-t2997368

Thanks for your quick reply !

[niks255]

I suggest you contact package author.

[riker09]

I'm having exactly the same issue on my LT15i (anzu). I downloaded the appropriate latest update from APK-Mirror. The 3-digit sequence is 434, if I'm not mistaken?

But when I try to install with adb it fails:

$ adb install -r -g Downloads/Android/com.google.android.gms_11.0.55_\(434-156917137\)-11055434_minAPI23\(armeabi-v7a\)\(240dpi\)_apkmirror.com.apk 
4089 KB/s (35598888 bytes in 8.500s)
	pkg: /data/local/tmp/com.google.android.gms_11.0.55_(434-156917137)-11055434_minAPI23(armeabi-v7a)(240dpi)_apkmirror.com.apk
Failure [INSTALL_PARSE_FAILED_UNEXPECTED_EXCEPTION]

[s-ilic]

The only solution I see would be to install the TWRP recovery on my Urushi in order to be able to install the packages from GApps... Is that even possible ?

[niks255]

It is possible. But you need to compile TWRP yourself.

[s-ilic]

Thank you niks255 for your answer.

I see... Well, I'm afraid that this is beyond my modest skills with regards to Android development... I'm willing to learn, but I wouldn't really know where to start ! Do you know maybe where I could find some nice tutorial about this ?

[s-ilic]

Hi there again,

Well in the end I managed to sideload a gapps .zip obtained from opengapps using the CWM recovery shipped with the LegacyXperia ROM, even though it says on the opengapps website that CWM is not supported... Strange ! (FYI, I used their latest ARM/6.0/pico package)

So far I haven't got any problem after the procedure, except for an "AOSP keyboard stopped working" error that kept popping up... I got rid of it by deactivating the AOSP keyboard and downloading an alternative one (Gboard). Shoud I be worried for any other consequence in the long term ?

Thanks !