Android Problems with Samsung Galaxy S2

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Emil

Forerunner
I have a SGS2 since just over 2 years now. Started with GB out of the box and then got the official ICS update. The phone worked fine till about a couple of months ago.
The phone suddenly seems to freeze or just goes off at times. The battery suddenly seems to go very low. Sometimes, when it suddenly shows a battery drop of large magnitude and goes off, if I wait a while and switch it on again. The battery again shows the old, good level.
I tried a factory reset and for a while it was a little better. But very soon it has got back to its old behaviour.
I was almost deciding to go for a new phone but am thinking about modding this one and trying first.
I have never tried modding before. I would really appreciate you guys feedback about first whether the problem could be software related and modding might resolve it and second, step by step instructions or a link on modding it.
 
I still have my SGS2, missus uses it now. IMO it is one of the best phones by sammy. But the crappy updates have ruined it. The last GB update was the best one. ICS and JB have wrecked havoc on the battery life and made the phone sluggish. If you succeed in modding it, do let me know as well.
 
Welcome to Samsung's world of bloatware [emoji3]
I had similar issues with my S2, even bought a new battery but that did not help. I finally decided to install a custom ROM and get rid of some of the battery draining apps.
I used CyanogenMod and OmniROM, most games work on these but Samsung doesn't exactly support the open source community so not having suitable display drivers may cause issues.
Just a tip, stick to Android 4.3 based ROMs because KitKat ROMs may cause problems (Fuse daemon hangs while accessing storage).
 
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@mrmash - sure. I am not aware of any official JB by Samsung. When did you get it?
@kreacher - Thanks for the info. Your statement about the display drivers is scary. I remember seeing on various forums that modders have never been worried about whether Samsung supports the OS community or not. I didn't think they would depend on Samsung for the display drivers. You have also not explicitly mentioned if the battery problem has been resolved in your case.
 
Emil said:
I have a SGS2 since just over 2 years now. Started with GB out of the box and then got the official ICS update. The phone worked fine till about a couple of months ago.
The phone suddenly seems to freeze or just goes off at times. The battery suddenly seems to go very low. Sometimes, when it suddenly shows a battery drop of large magnitude and goes off, if I wait a while and switch it on again. The battery again shows the old, good level.
I tried a factory reset and for a while it was a little better. But very soon it has got back to its old behaviour.
I was almost deciding to go for a new phone but am thinking about modding this one and trying first.
I have never tried modding before. I would really appreciate you guys feedback about first whether the problem could be software related and modding might resolve it and second, step by step instructions or a link on modding it.
Click to expand...

I still use S2 as my second phone (Three years old now). It's not lag free and smooth like My Nexus 5, but it's fast enough. I only do calling + emails + whatsapp on the S2, and I can manage a runtime of about 24-30 hours with Screen on time of 2 hours.

I settled on CM11 after trying 2-3 different roms at XDA. It gave me the best performance.
First root your device and flash CM11 M7 release (http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=i9100&type=snapshot), and then install greenify to hibernate unnecessary apps.
 
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@Emil - the official 4.1.2 jb firmware for india was pushed last year by samsung. Maybe june or july, dont remember the exact date. I have pm'ed you a link. Go through it.
I have even tried CM9 on my S2. It was good but there was sone issue with external memory card storage. No idea if it is resolved as of yet. If you try out some new kernels and the storage issue is resolved I would like to give it a go again.
 
@m0h1t - thanks. Could you point me to a link with instructions? I have another question. Do I need to have a SD card to mod the phone. Can the required backups be taken on the PC instead?
@mrmash - My phone shows 4.0.3 and it says there are no updates available. I saw your link. How do I install that version? Just browse to it on my phone?
 
Emil said:
@m0h1t - thanks. Could you point me to a link with instructions? I have another question. Do I need to have a SD card to mod the phone. Can the required backups be taken on the PC instead?
Click to expand...
Read this - http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s2/orig-development/30-10-2012-k-la-lp-t1103399

1 - Backup whatever you want to backup, though I would recommend a clean start
2 - Download Odin
3 - Download appropriate kernel from the thread link I gave above
4 - download CM11 M7 (http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=i9100&type=snapshot)
5 - Put phone in download mode and flash CF autoroot kernel from odin
6 - Reboot to recovery and flash CM11 zip file
7 - restore backup
8 - enjoy phone

Google for detailed instructions
 
Installed Odin and looked at the instructions in that link. It said to click the PDA button. There wasn't one on the Odin UI.
 
Emil said:
@kreacher - Thanks for the info. Your statement about the display drivers is scary. I remember seeing on various forums that modders have never been worried about whether Samsung supports the OS community or not. I didn't think they would depend on Samsung for the display drivers. You have also not explicitly mentioned if the battery problem has been resolved in your case.
Click to expand...

Yes, battery lasts a day quite easily without Samsung bloat ware.
They have to depend on Samsung for display drivers since its Exynos, Samsung releases source code for the kernel (Linux) but not the Mali graphics chipset drivers used by Exynos.
All custom ROM developers depend on chipset manufacturers for support, a device with manufacturer support is more likely to be stable when compared to a non supported device. There are a lot of complaints regarding Exynos against Samsung -
http://www.androidnext.de/schwerpunkt/codeworkx-cyanogenmod-interview-english/
https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z123czhhnwusz1ngd04cjzuinuytzv14dkw0k
 
odin3-v3-09-png.42424

This is what I get. I guess BL= Bootloader. So does AP mean PDA?[DOUBLEPOST=1404028153][/DOUBLEPOST]I'm still not sure what I should do. Am I hearing that I should merely root my phone and remove bloatware? If so, is there a list of bloatware that can be safely removed, I am concerned that I might end up removing something essential to the functioning.
 

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I rooted the phone, installed Titanium Backup and backed up and uninstalled what I felt was bloatware. Now it is under observation. :)
Might go for CM11 later. Could @m0h1t or someone else enumerate the advantages?
And what about the display driver related issues that @kreacher has mentioned? I do not play games other than Sudoku, which is hardly display intensive. Would CM11 create a problem?
 
CM11 has three selling points mainly - No bloatware, additional features and performance.

Performance was better on cm11 for me, both battery and responsiveness. It also has lot of additional features like lock screen customizations, themes, native flac support, chronos clock, built in ota cyanogen updates, performance tweaks, etc. Read more here -
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/About

If I were to put it in a single sentence - its fast(er), clean and has some useful additional features.

I'm not aware about the display driver issue on cm11, maybe I've been ignorant, but my niece and nephew keep playing all kinds of games on it including some stupid plants zombie game
 
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Emil said:
Thanks @m0h1t I will give it a few days and then try CM11. Just to confirm, I do not need an sd card for flashing do I?
Click to expand...
No you don't. You can put the zip file on internal memory, go to recovery and flash from there.

Also make sure you backup your EFS data, which stores your imei details. You can back-up that via TWRP recovery.
 
OK let me get my mind clear. Here's my understanding. My phone memory basically has two partitions. One has the OS and the other is the SD partition. Is that correct? I don't really care much about retaining the apps that I've installed. I can always do that again. I only want to make sure all my data is backed up. Now you also mention EFS data to be backed up using TWRP recovery. Noob question. I can't use Titanium for that?
Now what about CM11? Can this be downloaded to my computer and flashed from there like I did with the kernel?
 
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