Hello everyone!
Yesterday I got SGS2 as a replacement to my beloved SGS1 which I sold to my friend. I've read some FAQ's but I'm still unsure about some things. Can you please throw some light on my concerns?
1. Installing official firmwares via odin will NOT increase the flash counter, right? I would like to replace my branded Orange with vanilla ROM.
2. My phone has new GB 2.3.6 (branded Orange BVKL1) so I won't be able to reset flash counter with USB JIG after loading rooted kernel. If I decide to stay with GB I have to load old bootloader, right? For ICS I should use Triangle Away?
3. Is there /efs folder and how to back it up? Do I need to?
4. Is it worth upgrading to Samsung ICS or it's still too buggy? I'm used to GB and I can use it few months more. I prefer to have stable ROM with light battery usage rather than latest features that are not polished.
5. Can you recommend me some good GB and ICS kernel? I'm looking for something similar to Semaphore. I don't care about overclockig (phone is super smooth, comparing to SGS) but I would like to have deep idle and Voodoo Color (is it avalilable for SGS2?). Is Hardcore kernel OK? I used it in SGS, but it was very long time ago.
skibbi_pl said:
Hello everyone!
Yesterday I got SGS2 as a replacement to my beloved SGS1 which I sold to my friend. I've read some FAQ's but I'm still unsure about some things. Can you please throw some light on my concerns?
1. Installing official firmwares via odin will NOT increase the flash counter, right? I would like to replace my branded Orange with vanilla ROM.
2. My phone has new GB 2.3.6 (branded Orange BVKL1) so I won't be able to reset flash counter with USB JIG after loading rooted kernel. If I decide to stay with GB I have to load old bootloader, right? For ICS I should use Triangle Away?
3. Is there /efs folder and how to back it up? Do I need to?
4. Is it worth upgrading to Samsung ICS or it's still too buggy? I'm used to GB and I can use it few months more. I prefer to have stable ROM with light battery usage rather than latest features that are not polished.
5. Can you recommend me some good GB and ICS kernel? I'm looking for something similar to Semaphore. I don't care about overclockig (phone is super smooth, comparing to SGS) but I would like to have deep idle and Voodoo Color (is it avalilable for SGS2?). Is Hardcore kernel OK? I used it in SGS, but it was very long time ago.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Installing official firmwares will not increase your flash counter. The thing that increases your flash counter is custom kernels.
2. If you have a USB jig i would flash the old bootloader reset the counter and then flashback to the ICS bootloader if you wish to have it. I did this yesterday and the old bootloader had no problems booting in CM9.
3. I havent backed up my EFS folder but people do suggest that you do. I know there are apps out there to do this but i haven't looked in to it so i cant really comment.
4. I have used the sammy ICS and it is stable. battery however isn't if you stick to the stock kernel. raffaele88 has a very nice and stable sammy based (LP7) Rom in the dev section which i have found to be the best custom ICS sammy based rom atm.
5. For kernels most popular is probably Siyah or N.E.A.K. they have both ISC and GB versions. Hardcores kernel is meant to be good but i have never used it so again i cant comment.
skibbi_pl said:
Hello everyone!
Yesterday I got SGS2 as a replacement to my beloved SGS1 which I sold to my friend. I've read some FAQ's but I'm still unsure about some things. Can you please throw some light on my concerns?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Welcome to the sgs2 forums.
There's a Q&A section if you didn't notice...
I recommend you install XWLA4 from this thread using odin. It's the last GB rom for SGS2 and it's blazing fast without any known issues. It will debrand your phone and update to the newest version.
Don't bother with custom kernels for now. You will have great batterylife even with the stock kernel. If you're ready for them, the most popular ones are Siyah, Speedmod and NEAK.
Currently there is no software method to remove the triangle and custom binary counter on GB but on ICS you will manage with Triangle Away, so if you want to root your LA4 you will have to get a jig to reset the binary counter.
For now I don't think there's any reason for you to upgrade to ICS as it is slower overall and drains the battery more.
I have both the sgs1 and 2 and gingerbread is the way to go on both of them for now. Not until there's proper hardware acceleration for the browser at least.
Good Luck and have fun!
Back up EFS with Hellcat's kTool from Google Play (free).
Should you back it up ? Hell yes. Keep a copy of the backup on your external SD card in your phone, and another copy on your PC. You'd be surprised at how many people we get thru here every week with borked EFS/IMEI & no backup.
Thank you for your quick answers! I'll probably stay with GB for now, I just need to make myself a JIG just to have an option of resetting the counter.
Related
Hey yall
Just got my SGS2 International (GT-9100) and my screen protectors should be here in a couple days. I want to root it and put a custom ROM on it the minute I take it out of the box, much like I did with my SGS Captivate. On the Captivate, things were easy: flash to stock, flash cwm recovery via update.zip, flash Cognition (great ROM). So my questions:
1) I see a lot of stuff about different kernels, modems, radios, etc. I understand kernels, but is there any benefit to swapping out modems and radios? I kind of want a ROM like Cognition was for the captivate where everything is packaged as one. Also, what kernels would be considered closest to stock?
2) What's all this about a usb jig?? What are the yellow triangle and the kernel mod count?
I'm in the US but I bought the phone online so I don't know what country its branded for...I don't know if that would effect the firmware on it
If your after more info, please follow this thread exactly to root your phone;
[27.09.2011][CF-Root v4.2] KE2/7/8,KF1/2/3/4,KG1/2/3/5/6/7,KH1/3/4,KI2/3/4-su+bb+CWM4
If your interested;
[ROM][2.3.4][XXKH3] Cognition S2 v1.5.1 | Now Live!
There are plenty of FAQ there as well.
Good stockish themes with customized lockscreen etc;
[Theme/Mod/Apk] XWKI4 - JKay Deluxe v11 - How the SGS2 should be! 11-09-28
USB Jig is a easy way to reset a counter that shows if you'ved flashed a custom ROM and how many times. Good for sending back devices to Samsung for warranty claim, particularly if it's semi-bricked and system cannot be booted.
Best of luck, and make sure you read all you can, icl FAQ, and follow the guides/instructions EXACTLY.
i am from galaxy mini forum so get a galaxy s2 but how to know if it is S2 or S2 GT-i9100 o and what the diffirence?? and can you gays pleas link me to a tut aboug instaling costome recovery, which ODIN to use and so on .... last thing which is the best stable rom to use .....thanks in advance
1) Check the sticker on the phone chassis under the battery.
2) Differences between SGS2 variants ? Wikipedia.
3) Just about everything you need to know to get you started is in the Stickies.
4) There's no such thing as the "best stable rom to use". There are a heap of custom roms for the SGS2, it's an individual preference thing. And because no two people use their phone the same way or have it setup the same, and because component-wise no two phones come out of the factory exactly the same, your experience with a particular rom will most likely vary from mine.
The best thing to do is to get your phone rooted, preferably with CWM installed. This will enable you to backup, restore & flash roms/kernels in a matter of minutes. You can than try a bunch of roms for yourself. If you find you don't like a rom you try, it's easy to go back to your previous setup easily by restoring a backup; recommended regularly/before you flash anything to your phone.
ok so by flashing cwm and then a costom rom the divise will root by it self and do i have to flash a stock ics rom to install a costom ics rom??????
Lackchoo,
Flash one of Chainfire's kernels. His instructions are very clear. That will give you root and CWM, and possibly also a yellow triangle at startup which you shouldn't worry about at all.
You don't need to flash a stock ICS ROM to flash a custom ROM. After rooted, in CWM, just install the downloaded ZIP ROM file of the custom ROM. You will keep root and triangle will go away.
Ditto what the above person said about ROM's. However, you can try Cyanogen (Do a 'stable' release, not a 'nightly'), its the most 'popular' ROM in terms of numbers. One can't and shouldn't say which one is best. But for a newbie, I think Cyanogen is a good place to start. Perhaps it will give you the least issues and the most 'oohs!' for your initial newbie effort
I don't have the links with me from the smart phone, but just search 'chainfire kernel root galaxy s2' and 'cyanogen galaxy s2' and you should find the relevant thread. Read it slowly and repeatedly! I know I had to
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
Hi, I have the orange i9100p - and rooted using the rachmat3 method
I could really do with a few pointers- Especially from people with the same phone version and root method
I've flashed ROMs before on other phones (desire, desire HD Touch Diamond) but the whole thing seems bewildering on this phone, I've spent days reading and still dont really know whats going on and whats the best way to proceed
So my phone is as stock, still with the Orange ROM updated to ICS, I assume it has stock kernels, but it is rooted etc
I was hoping to flash another ROM, maybe without the Orange stuff, and perhaps one that can use JKAY or something as everyone seems to think thats great and mine dosent seem to be supported. Also maybe deodexed if thats worth doing. I dont like the stock unlock screen, and also tried the s3 launcher and it didnt work on this current ROM - so I want to switch to something that will allow me to do these things.
The only trouble is I have no idea what do. Nothing ever seems to be the obvious way forward
These are some of the questions I keep coming up against -
Should I be able to do these things on my current ROM -
If I change ROMS will I loose NFC (should I care?)
Do I need to keep the same kernel to avoid brickbug risk, and to keep things simple, and if so how do I do that, they all seem to come with Kernel with Chainfire installed which I dont need right? (delete zimage out of the zip file?)
Should I flash with the temporary CWM, or use odin (I haven't used odin yet - can I use it with only the temporary CWM)
Are there any obvious ROMs that would be easy for me to get the above from
Here are some details -
model - gt i9100p
Android version 4.0.3
Baseband version i9100pbvlp7
kernel version [email protected]#3
build number IML74K.BVLP8
Anyone with this phone model in particular, or if you used Rachmat3's method - I'd love to hear what you've done
Free bump for an interesting title.
I'm in a similar situation to the original poster. Got the I9100P UK Orange phone and wanting to flash new firmware but a bit daunted by the information and options out there. I've flashed the old Samsung i8910 and that was pretty painless. The S2 seems a lot more complicated and with more potential problems!
If you can afford the risk, all you need to do is take the leap of faith. Rom and kernel are mostly "safe" to flash (except stock 4.0.4), if incompatible will result in soft brick the phone, where you only have to get it back to download mode and flash back a working one.
Yes, i think you will lose NFC...
It is daunting but dont just be like most of the noobs on here and proceed without doing any research first.
They dont even have the decency to read about basics like
What is cwm
How do I root
What is Odin
Sent from my GT-I9100
L1ndon said:
Hi, I have the orange i9100p - and rooted using the rachmat3 method
I could really do with a few pointers- Especially from people with the same phone version and root method
I've flashed ROMs before on other phones (desire, desire HD Touch Diamond) but the whole thing seems bewildering on this phone, I've spent days reading and still dont really know whats going on and whats the best way to proceed
So my phone is as stock, still with the Orange ROM updated to ICS, I assume it has stock kernels, but it is rooted etc
I was hoping to flash another ROM, maybe without the Orange stuff, and perhaps one that can use JKAY or something as everyone seems to think thats great and mine dosent seem to be supported. Also maybe deodexed if thats worth doing. I dont like the stock unlock screen, and also tried the s3 launcher and it didnt work on this current ROM - so I want to switch to something that will allow me to do these things.
The only trouble is I have no idea what do. Nothing ever seems to be the obvious way forward
These are some of the questions I keep coming up against -
Should I be able to do these things on my current ROM -
If I change ROMS will I loose NFC (should I care?)
Do I need to keep the same kernel to avoid brickbug risk, and to keep things simple, and if so how do I do that, they all seem to come with Kernel with Chainfire installed which I dont need right? (delete zimage out of the zip file?)
Should I flash with the temporary CWM, or use odin (I haven't used odin yet - can I use it with only the temporary CWM)
Are there any obvious ROMs that would be easy for me to get the above from
Here are some details -
model - gt i9100p
Android version 4.0.3
Baseband version i9100pbvlp7
kernel version [email protected]#3
build number IML74K.BVLP8
Anyone with this phone model in particular, or if you used Rachmat3's method - I'd love to hear what you've done
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, I have one galaxy s2 i9100p (O2). I come from a stock gb, rooted and flashed a new custom rom using the recovery mode, full wipe and every other things... I lost the nfc function and never found a method to bring this back but every other things are working fine, very fast and stable on 4.0.3 version with siyah kernel... i think you don't will have problems too but you will lose the nfc. it's your choise BTW, I have the stock ics rom with NFC (o2), I don't know but if you need, send me a PM, just flash the .tar file with odin and everything will work again (NFC), like factory new one (sorry my english :/)
L1ndon said:
Hi, I have the orange i9100p - and rooted using the rachmat3 method
I could really do with a few pointers- Especially from people with the same phone version and root method
I've flashed ROMs before on other phones (desire, desire HD Touch Diamond) but the whole thing seems bewildering on this phone, I've spent days reading and still dont really know whats going on and whats the best way to proceed
So my phone is as stock, still with the Orange ROM updated to ICS, I assume it has stock kernels, but it is rooted etc
I was hoping to flash another ROM, maybe without the Orange stuff, and perhaps one that can use JKAY or something as everyone seems to think thats great and mine dosent seem to be supported. Also maybe deodexed if thats worth doing. I dont like the stock unlock screen, and also tried the s3 launcher and it didnt work on this current ROM - so I want to switch to something that will allow me to do these things.
The only trouble is I have no idea what do. Nothing ever seems to be the obvious way forward
These are some of the questions I keep coming up against -
Should I be able to do these things on my current ROM -
If I change ROMS will I loose NFC (should I care?)
Do I need to keep the same kernel to avoid brickbug risk, and to keep things simple, and if so how do I do that, they all seem to come with Kernel with Chainfire installed which I dont need right? (delete zimage out of the zip file?)
Should I flash with the temporary CWM, or use odin (I haven't used odin yet - can I use it with only the temporary CWM)
Are there any obvious ROMs that would be easy for me to get the above from
Here are some details -
model - gt i9100p
Android version 4.0.3
Baseband version i9100pbvlp7
kernel version [email protected]#3
build number IML74K.BVLP8
Anyone with this phone model in particular, or if you used Rachmat3's method - I'd love to hear what you've done
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi there,
I have the same phone model with the same kernel, radio and stock rom.
Did you manage to upgrade firmware to JB (which kernel and rom did you use) and keep NFC??
A friend of mine has a i9100 (16GB) running Gingerbread 2.3.4 and is tempted to upgrade but my experience on that is limited so I decided to ask here first:
- was there any change in partitioning on i9100 from 2.3.4 to 4.1.x ? or any major change that I should be aware?
- he seems to have the original boot and recovery - best way to upgrade those?
- the battery life seems to be very poor for him right now - would an update to a custom ROM improve things? would something based on 4.1.x be the best improvement?
- overall - what are the steps that you would recommend in going from 2.3.4 to 4.1.x?
xclub_101 said:
A friend of mine has a i9100 (16GB) running Gingerbread 2.3.4 and is tempted to upgrade but my experience on that is limited so I decided to ask here first:
- was there any change in partitioning on i9100 from 2.3.4 to 4.1.x ? or any major change that I should be aware?
- he seems to have the original boot and recovery - best way to upgrade those?
- the battery life seems to be very poor for him right now - would an update to a custom ROM improve things? would something based on 4.1.x be the best improvement?
- overall - what are the steps that you would recommend in going from 2.3.4 to 4.1.x?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GB is 2 years old OS.
JB is 7 month old.
Yes, things have improved, in every android aspect.
Right path to upgrade? ODIN.
Safest path? MOBILE ODIN.
What you should do before trying anything:
Read, Watch, Learn and Read again.
Sent from the little guy
The overall improvement was quite good.
It was a little tricky since I first wanted to update the recovery to the latest from philz - which did not work by using the original recovery and a signed zip (which would have avoided the triangle and flash counter) - so in the end I updated the recovery from odin.
Of course that the kernel coming with that was no longer booting the phone, so immediately after that I installed the latest omega - and that started to work fine 'out of the box'. I also had to update things with triangleaway.
I have also added the Siyah kernel for the BLN feature.
Well here´s what has been played out the latest couple of days...
I got myselfe a used S3 that was rooted and had Wanamlite ROM with the enclosed kernel flashed. I felt it was rather choppy and laggy so I flashed one of the prerooted ME7 found on XDA.
However that did not help a bit and on top of all the choppyness and the freezez I also got really poor batterylife.
So... I got some help in another thread to unroot and flashing the stock ROM with ODIN. After that the phone has been working as it should... no lagging and no freezes. Although I have the damned chip that causes the "Sudden Death" the factory reset seems to have done the job. But... WHY? Both WanamLite uses the stock kernel (right?) and the ME7 that I tried also uses the stock kernel... How is it that the "sudden Death-syndrom" disappeared after unrooting and reflashing stock?
Now to my question... a question that has been answered a thousand times before. Is it Worth to install a custom ROM with the new leaked firmware? I would really like it to be a custom version of the "official" ME7... prerooted and tweaked for best batterylife.
Any hints what to choose? Besides not getting root, perhaps the best choise would be to flash the unrooted "leaked" untouched ME7 with ODIN?
Any input would be nice!
>>>>>Custom 4.2.2 ME7 are stable enough for daily use .
Any hints what to choose? Besides not getting root, perhaps the best choise would be to flash the unrooted "leaked" untouched ME7 with ODIN?
>>>>What rom best rom posts are not allowed .
Suggest you stick with stock and read up .
jje
Thanx for the answers.... but you missed the point!
Witch ROM is the best is not all that important... the question is rather if my experience of the "sudden death syndrom" will perhaps return if I flash other than stock ROM.
Also... the other question was IF I want the ME7 leak... is it better to stick to the stock untouched one or a custom one, regarding batterylife and smoothness.
For a start you didn't have sds or you wouldn't still be using your phone....poor setup/corrupt data most likely cause.
If you want advice on Roms go and read the relevant threads
Manneman32 said:
Thanx for the answers.... but you missed the point!
Witch ROM is the best is not all that important... the question is rather if my experience of the "sudden death syndrom" will perhaps return if I flash other than stock ROM.
Also... the other question was IF I want the ME7 leak... is it better to stick to the stock untouched one or a custom one, regarding batterylife and smoothness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No i did not miss the point .
One you need to read the basics and two ( one, regarding batterylife and smoothness.) is classed as what rom best rom .
The answer is its subjective and for you to decide on what rom .
jje