Nexus 7 2013 having video playback issues after Lollipop update

There has been much talk about the latest version of the popular Android operating system, Lollipop 5.0, and ever since Google announced it earlier this year, users have been eager to get their hands on the update.

Well, according to latest reports, owners of the Nexus 7 (2nd edition) may have wished they hadn’t bothered with the update. Users of the tablet have noted that the device appears to be having problems playing videos from various sources including YouTube and also locally saved ones too. For users trying to play videos on YouTube, the vast majority are being presented with an error telling them that “there was a problem while playing. Touch to retry” however it has little affect when done.

The issue was raised on the AOSP forums 3 days ago, and since then a steady flow of users have reported the exact same problem – with Google yet to confirm the bug or a timeframe to fix it.

Now, there seems to be a few ways of resolving the problems with video playback, albeit frustratingly only temporarily. The suggestions from affected users include simply restarting the tablet, which does not work for everyone. Other methods suggested include going into “Settings”, repeatedly tapping “Build Number” to enable “Developer Mode”, then disabling or enabling the “Use Nuplayer (experimental) option – once done, reboot the tablet.

Hopefully Google can release a more permanent fix for this problem; it’s certainly not a great start for the search giants Nexus branded devices, but to be fair it’s not as if Apple release software without any bugs.

At present it seems as if the bug is only affecting this particular device, and oddly not the 2012 version of the Nexus 7, or in-fact the now older Nexus 4 or Nexus 5. We’re interested in knowing whether anyone has experienced the same on their 2013 Nexus 7 device, if you have make sure you let us know in the comments section. And as ever, if we have any more information about this issue, you can be assured we’ll let you know.