Flashing Jelly Bean 4.1.2 to Samsung Galaxy S2

Posted on 19/02/2013 by MrMediaKID in Blog

Home» Blog » Flashing Jelly Bean 4.1.2 to Samsung Galaxy S2

I am a proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy S2 aka i9100. I purchased the phone with the Gingerbread v2.3.4 Operating System pre-installed.

From day one I experienced unusual problems with my S2 i.e. fast battery drainage and overheating. At first I thought it was just the way the phone was, but after reading some articles online I realised that I wasn’t the only S2 owner experiencing problems with the phone.

Below is a list of the problems I was experiencing with my S2, the first two I experienced from the day I purchased the phone…

Battery: The battery drained really fast – I was charging the phone twice a day, clearing the RAM and correctly closing down the apps only made a small difference.
Overheating Regularly – I remember on one occasion the phone was in my pocket, it had gotten so hot that I had to quickly remove it and pull that battery out the phone. You could have fried an egg on the phone it was that hot.
Crash: The phone began to freeze and then suddenly restart and did this daily – How spooky is that!
Other: My main email accounts were connected to the default ‘Email’ app, but downloading the emails to the phone took forever if at all and some of the well developed apps worked slower on my phone than on other devices running the Ice-Cream Sandwich OS.

After some research I found out that many people who experienced similar issues like me resolved them by upgrading the firmware on their S2 to the latest version of Ice-Cream Sandwich. However I also stumbled across loads of articles online talking about the leaked Jelly Bean firmware V4.1.2 which many have tested and claim it to be a working firmware upgrade and very stable.

It has been a while since I’ve upgraded firmware on any mobile phone, so I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the firmware on my S2 from Gingerbread V2.3.4 to Jelly Bean v4.1.2. Below is a guide I created on how to install the firmware on your S2, you may also be able to install the firmware on other Android phones but make sure you do your research first.

The instructions provided in this guide are meant for reference purpose only and do not cover any warranty claims involving device damage or issues arising from installing the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean firmware on your Samsung Galaxy S2. Users are advised to proceed at their own risk. I will take no responsibility if you brick your phone.

Things you will do:

1st Install the Jelly Bean firmware

What you will need:

Windows based machine (It’s easier)
Samsung Kies (Download from here) Kies is a piece of software created by Samsung to backup your phone data and a guide on how to use it is covered here
Android USB Driver for Windows OS (Download from here) Kies comes pre-installed with USB drivers so you can skip this step.
Odin v3.07 (Download from here)
Jelly Bean Firmware (Download from here)

Make sure:

You backup your phone data using Samsung Kies
The battery is fully charged

Lets get started!

Download & Unzip the Jelly Bean Firmware to your desktop, there will be 6 files in the folder – You will make use of three of the files!
Download, Unzip and run Odin – this will be the program you will use to flash the firmware to your Samsung Galaxy S2.
Connect your Samsung Galaxy S2 to your PC using the USB cable that came in the same box as the phone – The square panel under label ‘ID:COM’ in Odin will turn Blue.If it doesn’t turn blue… download and install Android USB drivers for your phone (link found above) then restart Odin and repeat Step 3.
Click on the PDA button, Navigate to your desktop to where you unzipped the Jelly Bean firmware and select ‘CODE_I9100XXLSJ.tar‘
Click on the PHONE button, Navigate to your desktop to where you unzipped the Jelly Bean firmware and select ‘MODEM_I9100XXLS6.tar‘
Click on the CSC button, Navigate to your desktop to where you unzipped the Jelly Bean firmware and select ‘CSC_HOME_OXX_I9100OXXLS1.tar‘
Make sure ‘Re-Partition‘ is not selected
Click on the ‘Start‘ button and wait. Your phone is being flashed. Once complete your phone will restart automatically with the Jelly Bean firmware installed.