For owners of the Samsung S2 running gingerbread or ice cream sandwich, samsung have now relesed jelly bean for the S2, jelly bean is the same operating system as the samsung galaxy S3 is running.

So it will breath new life into your S2.

The only thing is, you can only use samsung kies to install it for now if your phone is a sim free, if it is a branded phone from a network, you will have to wait a few months untill your network has messed around with the jelly bean firmware and added the own stuff to it, before kies will let you install.

ICS has killed my S2. I cant wait for Jelly bean

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=28036

Out of frustration i'm tempted to roll back to Gingerbread, my phone was amazing on that version.

Sim free or branded users can download the Jellybean 4.1.2 for SII here. Perfectly safe, you just need to download odin to install it. ( Odin is a genuine samsung app)

Its all on this page.



If your phone is network locked, please note, after installing the update, it will remain sim locked ( but i do know how to unlock it with a few presses

Or you may be better off waiting for a genuine release, as flashing your phone invalidates your warranty, and i believe if you try to flash a locked phone, you will have an expensive paper weight, for people in uk with sim free, you want XEU version, and why flash the phone when samsung will let you update to jelly bean via kies.

This is a genuine release from Samsung. I hate Carriers messing about with software, filling it up with bloatware etc and making you wait for the new release. Get rid of it and Flash to stock Samsung Jellybean 4.1.2 , And it does not invalidate the warranty, thats why samsung make available their own flashing software (ODIN) to ensure your flash goes ahead without and problems. Its not an iphone you know!

And also, if you flash a carrier locked phone, it will not be bricked. It simply flashes but once done, the sim lock remains.

Sorry i forgot to put in, that if you have a network branded phone and you flash it, and for some reason have to send it for repair through the network, then they refuse to fix it if it has been flashed and there own firmware has been removed., I agree 100% about the bloatware.

I would not flash, I would rather wait for updates to come direct from samsung, via kies., I have noticed samsung have now put the new jelly bean manual for s2 on the download page for s2. the same as they have for the note 2, i just checked on kies for my note 2 and no jelly bean yet.

I have to disagree. The carriers Won't care as they just send it back to samsung anyway. And in the event the carrier refused to replace it, Samsung would replace it anyway ( with a stock Version )

Doc? Any input?

In my situation i unlocked my phone ages ago as i bought it outright. The problem is with many the ICS Update has made my wifi a joke, its unpredictable and can force the phone to reboot without warning. From Gingerbread to ICS for me was a Huge Mistake. I wish i had left well alone.

If Jelly Bean fails to resolve the problems i'm having then i will Root the phone and go Gingerbread.

I shall do all this when i get my hands on the S4
April - May Release date predicted.

S2 is a cracking phone, i hope the S4 is as ground breaking.

It is possable to get your phone back to the original firmware that was on it when you bought it, via samsung kies,
click on tools,
firmware upgrade initialisation,
enter model number in caps,
then serial number,
put phone in recovery mode
switch phone off
press power button whilst pressing volume up button then plug in phone and press volume up button to continue, and follow what kies says on pc screen.

This will reinstall original firmware that was originally on phone when it left factory.

The networks do not send then to samsung, they send them to there own tech departments.

Yes you can go direct to samsung if phone is still on warranty, however if your phone was a branded one to begin with but you debranded it yourself, samsung will reinstall the original firmware that was on it from new, so if it was originally a t mobile, then samsung will put t-mobile firmware back on it.

I dint know that. . .
What's Recovery Mode ? Pillow and a Ciggy ?

I really do crave Gingerbread back again.
Mine is 02 Branded as i bought it out right with them at the time of release. Unlocked by them. Very Interested to look into that option on Kies

I did back up my phone on Gingerbread with kies before i moved to ICS glad i did now.

Just make sure you have the new samsung kies, and use kies lite it puts 2 shortcuts on desktop when you install new kies, just use kies lite.
As it was originally o2 branded, kies will put the original o2 firmware back on it.

@Mark: What is your battery life like on your S2, I seem to be only getting a day out of mine, and thats with sync turned off, I also notice it seems to be using lots of data, I have just had to increase my data on tariff to unlimited.

I changed my battery about 5 months ago i was struggling to get a full day out of it.

Data i think i had to turn sync to about 4 times a day to stay under 500mb.

I switched to giffgaff now no worries about sync.

Ive read about leaking batteries that kill the Wifi inside.

I will order a new battery, i was looking at the bigger batterys but for that i need to get the bigger back for phone aswell

Beware of Copies.
I bought one off ebay and reordered the sticker and it was a copy.
Go for the ones that say genuine its worth the extra few quid.

Some say they are genuine when they are not. Just looking on Amazon now for them.
Do you reckon this one is genuine Clicky

Looks ok not seeing the work Genuine ?
I looked at the Bigger batter but though about the problems with cradles and case covers etc.

As the seller the question

Ive rooted my GS2. Ive installed a custom rom. Kies no longer recognizes my devices current firmware. Is there anyway I can install it on my GS2?

* There used to be issues with Kies on the USB
That could be your problem. Install Kies on a different pc and see if that gets it noticed.

Also for what ever reason i had more success with kies when i used an original lead and not a copy lead.

Few things to try there.

Jelly bean on my nexus 4 is awesome. Easily the best version of android. The new keyboard is awesome and Google now is scarily good