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Phoenix rises from the ashes: The Samsung Galaxy S II gets a taste of Android 12
The Samsung Galaxy S II simply refuses to die. Released back in 2011, the smartphone has now received a port of Android 12. Read on!
Just a day ago, we spoke about devices outliving their generation by leaps and bounds, and highlighted the Samsung Galaxy S III's prowess in doing so. Despite a number of devices following similar paths thanks to the dedication of developers on our forums, the undoubted champion that simply refuses to give up, is the second-gen Galaxy S. The venerable Samsung Galaxy S II has not only received Android builds light years ahead of it’s time, but it has also managed to run non-Android operating systems, such as Ubuntu Touch. Now, XDA Senior Member rINanDO has taken another important step in continuing the device's legacy, by successfully booting an Android 12 ROM on it.
The Galaxy S II still lives: Developer unofficially ports LineageOS 18.1 based on Android 11
The Samasung Galaxy S II has received a port of Android 11 in the form of unofficial LineageOS 18.1. Read on to know more!
In the last few months, we've talked about various unofficial Android 11 ports for numerous devices. Some of them were expected, as they were fairly new devices with a strong development backing. However, there were quite a few surprising entries, like the port for the Raspberry Pi 4, which was never intended to run Android in the first place. Now, another legendary device, the Samsung Galaxy S II, has received a taste of Android 11 through an unofficial build of LineageOS 18.1.
Developers bring Android 10 to the ancient Samsung Galaxy S II and Galaxy Note 3
Developers have brought Android 10 ROMs to the Samsung Galaxy S II and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which were launched in 2011 and 2013 respectively.
Nowadays, Android flagship phones receive two years of software support. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S8 was launched with Android 7.0 Nougat. It received Android 8.0 Oreo and Android 9 Pie, but it won't officially receive Android 10. The same is applicable for flagship phones of other device makers. Mid-range phones and budget phones often receive only a single year of software support, or in case of some budget phones, no software support at all. Device makers have no incentive to roll out Android version updates to any device two years after its launch, because a) The phone's BSP (Board Support Package) stops receiving support from the chip maker, and more importantly b) They have to convince consumers to buy their latest flagships. It's certainly not an ideal situation, because competing Apple iPhones receive as much as five years of software support. While official software updates will only go so far, users of older devices still have one option left. It's the custom ROM community.
Say what you will about the inherent inconveniences in /data/media devices, but they also have their advantages. While USB Mass Storage mode is generally considered to be more power user friendly with direct disk operations and more reliable for large data transfers, MTP devices allow for a single /data partition to handle both media and application storage. Having media and application storage both housed within one partition means that you can never run out of application storage space while having many gigs free on your internal SD card.
One of our goals for the year has been to better organize all of the development works (ROMs, apps, tools, kernels, etc.) on XDA. We wanted this to be useful but also to have minimal impact on how developers post to XDA and on users who are happy with the current structure of the forums.
It's no secret that Samsung has dropped the ball in some areas such as the Exynos brick bug and the lack of proper documentation. However, they managed to keep true to their word that the Samsung Galaxy S II would officially see Jelly Bean. This will put the device on software that is as up to date as the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
We've recently reported on a number of devices receiving a port of the increasingly popular PACman ROM. The most recent recipients being the HTC Desire S and Desired HD. The ROM, originally developed by XDA Senior Member szl.kiev for the Sony Xperia Ray, is a concoction of the best bits taken from Paranoid Android, AOKP, and CyanogenMod, all thrown together into one awesomely featured ROM.
The last time we brought you news about TWRP, it was to announce that TWRP 2.2.2 had been released. It had fixed a lot of bugs from the initial release of TWRP 2.2 and added a few new features. Very recently, TWRP has been updated again to version 2.3.
Quick, simple, and dirty. Some of the best hacks around on XDA require very little to get them to work, and make your life easier in the process. Also, these "simple tricks" tend to fix major snafus from some manufacturers when it comes to so-called features that make you ask "What in the world were they thinking?" So is the case for many Samsung Galaxy devices.
Have you tried out the Galaxy S III and love the exclusive bundled apps? Do you want those apps, but find yourself satisfied with last year's Galaxy S II and don't want to shell out your hard-earned cash just to get those apps? You don't have to, thanks to your beloved developer community here at XDA.
Many Galaxy S II and III owners who do a lot of heavy gaming on their phones have run out of space for game data in internal storage. While both of these devices support external SD cards, there is no official method available to use that instead for the storage. Fortunately, there is an easy solution for this problem now with free tool DirectoryBind.
We've been bringing ongoing coverage of the Samsung hard brick bug that's affecting a large number of users. For those unfamiliar, the hard brick bug causes complete and irreparable damage to the eMMC storage device. It came about when the first leaks to ICS on a variety of Samsung devices were released, and they've been a problem ever since.
By now, we're all familiar with the hard brick bug that's plagued various Samsung when updating to leaked builds of ICS. The bug has shown up on various Samsung Exynos 4210-based devices including the Galaxy Note GT-N7000, Epic 4G Touch, AT&T Galaxy S II, and the Korean SHW-M250S/K/L.
Since the latest leaks for the Samsung Galaxy S2 line up have been hitting us left and right, people have been jumping between ROMs---mainly between buggy, pre-release ICS builds and very stable GB. This is, after all, what we do on XDA as a habit: We see a leak, we flash it, we use it, and we tweak it. If it doesn't fly, we simply roll back. Of course, there is always an inherent risk in flashing stuff that should not be on your device in the first place, but the risk of fully bricking a device in this day and age is rather small. Especially, since there are tools available to bring your devices back from the dead, such as UnBrickable Mod by XDA Elite Recognized Developer AdamOutler.
While mounting NTFS may not be the first feature users line up for when buying an Android phone, it can certainly be useful at times. For those out there who may be thinking of mounting an NTFS USB key or hard drive to their Android devices, you actually now have an app for that.
One of the most irritating things about the Google Play Store, is trying to install an application, only to be thrown back by things like country restrictions. Granted, some apps wouldn't work in some countries anyway, but there's quite a few out there that have nothing to do with your geological location, which would work perfectly fine if downloaded.
Sometimes bad things happen and you don't even know it. Flashing modules can wreck your WiFi, kernels can bork your camera and, and flashing some ROMs can mess with your EFS folder---and thus your IMEI---on Samsung devices including the popular Galaxy S II I9100.
Too often you'll see a review that says that a screen looks a little washed or that the whites look a little blue or even that the blacks look a little green. Following that thought, there aren't many ways of fixing such a problem when it does occur.
The USB host function on recent Android phones and tablets, is perhaps the most unspoken yet incredibly useful innovation in recent mobile device development. I remember, a few years ago some developers struggling with connecting a 3.5" HDD to an HTC Touch Diamond, and see where we landed now: manufacturers are slowly building the USB host function into their phones and tablets. The Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Nexus were said to be able to host any USB device as long as it doesn't require any special drivers- so any flash drive and hard disk should be able to connect with those phones. But the USB Host functionality didn't work at all.
The wonderful world of NV, EFS, and all the inherent dangers that come from messing with this. For those of you who have no clue as to what I am talking about, there is a dark, really deep and well protected section of your device that is virtually immune to any kind of flashing and manipulation (unless of course you know how to access it). This part of the device contains information such as IMEI (or MEID and ESN in the case of CDMA devices), programming parameters for the device such as your account information (phone number, etc), data provisioning parameters, and a whole bunch of other things that, when not handled properly, can render a device completely useless. All of these are contained in the infamous \EFS folder. XDA Recognized Developer lyriquidperfection just updated an app that he started working on not too long ago, which basically allows you to back up and restore the contents of this folder, just in case. It seems to be rather simple to corrupt this by trying to unlock or change certain "numbers" in it, which is why being able to back up the original thing is rather important. HTC devices are normally associated with tweaking this due to the ease of getting the device in Diag mode via EPST. However, Samsung devices (and really most devices out there) can indeed be put in Diag mode to access this special section.