A few weeks ago, I received a text from ATT telling me that there was an update available for my Samsung Galaxy S2 – Jelly Bean. The directions included a link to a website (http://www.samsung.com/us/attgalaxys2/update) that eventually instructed me to use Kies to apply the update, just like ICS – no OTA update here. I then realized that I needed to install Kies on the computer I was using and proceeded to do so…this took forever – even on a system with an SSD. It sat on this stupid “Installing hotfix” screen forever – and it looked like it installed about 37 “hotfixes” before actually installing the Kies application:
After opening the Kies application in ‘basic’ mode instead of ‘Lite’ mode my phone was connected and recognized – I first did a backup of the data on the phone:
…then proceeded with the update that I was prompted with. First, it will download the firmware presumably to a temporary location on the laptop.
The update will then sit on the following screen for some time without showing any notice that it is doing anything…either this screen, or the Kies home screen will go dark gray and not responding.
Then finally something happens – the downloaded file is decrypted and decompressed and something happens. The phone will likely reboot two times during the process.
Done! Your phone is now updated to Jelly Bean 4.1.2 – most of my personal data was preserved…phone records, MMS records, app data, history, contacts, etc. The home screens were the biggest things that I noticed were NOT ported (and the root binary). After some use I’ll post an update about functionality and what not – the biggest thing I’m testing now is to see if it can stay connected to a 2.4GHz N wifi network with wireless multimedia turned on.