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The Galaxy S II is an iconic device in Samsung's line-up. It had a big role in changing the public's perception of Samsung's brand and establishing it as a major smartphone player. But in our day and age, at a time when the S7 is about to be announced, the S II is getting long, really looooooooong in the tooth. It's a 5-year old device by now and its specs (dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 4.3" 480x800 display) can hardly be found in the lowest of the low-end Android phones. It does have 1GB of RAM and 16/32GB of storage though, which make it a potential candidate ripe for more modern Android ROMs.
At this point, custom ROMs are the only things keeping old Galaxy S2s feeling fresh and vaguely modern. If you turned to CyanogenMod as your experience of choice, you've been left stranded on version 11 running Android KitKat. Now you're in for a treat. Fresh builds of CyanogenMod 12.1 are ready for download.
Talk about a blast from the past: the Sprint Galaxy S II, released way back in 2011, now has official CyanogenMod support. Most of the other international and regional versions of the GSII are already supported to some degree, but I'm sure there are more than a few Sprint customers who are happy to see the most popular custom ROM family come to their devices. There's one nightly of CM10.1 (Android 4.2) available at the time of writing.
You know the spill by now: Samsung is pushing Jelly Beans to umpteen hundred Galaxy devices, yadda yadda yadda. Now, it's the Galaxy S II Skyrocket's turn. We haven't heard anything about this phone in some time, so to see this update make its way to the airwaves was quite a welcome surprise.
The Jelly Bean rollout for Galaxy device has been fast and furious as of late, with Samsung making the update available to nearly all of its current and former flagship devices. Today's the day for T-Mobile's version of the Galaxy S II – but the download is only available via Samsung's Kies software.
Go ahead and file this one in the Super Cool Tech category. A Russian blog, Rozetked.ru, posted video of a Galaxy S2 running two copies of Android at the same time. The three-and-a-half minute video takes us through a demo switching between a pair of ROMs while playing music from both, proving that the hardware resources can be shared. After the audio segment, we are shown decently high frame rates on a 3D benchmarking app and Angry Birds. According to the team behind the project, running two concurrent instances of Android only takes about 10% off of battery life while the impact on system speed is negligible. Unfortunately, the voiceover and original subtitles are in Russian, but the automatic translation on YouTube does a passable job of clearing things up for the rest of us. (You may need to manually enable subtitles.)
According to a forum post on AT&T's support site and some scattered user reports, the carrier's Galaxy S II variant is receiving a small update today. Rolling out over the air as you read these words, the software fixes an issue where devices would become unresponsive or power down while idle.
We sure weren't expecting this, but today Sprint announced on its support site that the Epic 4G Touch (the Now Network's branded version of the Galaxy S II) is getting an update to Jelly Bean. Undoubtedly version 4.1, but this would still be a welcome upgrade as it brings with it the ability to access Google Now, among a host of other features.
Samsung recently starting updating its aging-but-not-dead flagship phone from yesteryear (OK, technically it was the year before that, but yesteryesteryear isn't a thing) to Jelly Bean. And when Samsung updates things, you know what that means, right? Source code. Because a new version of Android brings with it a new kernel. And Android modders want new source to go along with that new kernel. So Samsung delivered, as always.
The CyanogenMod team has been hard at work building CM10.1 for various devices over the last several weeks, with new devices getting official builds almost daily. Yesterday, we saw 10.1 hit AT&T and T-Mobile's versions of the Galaxy Note and AT&T's S II Skyrocket; today, the first nightly just landed for T-Mo's Galaxy S II, as well.
Last week, we reported on an OTA update for the T-Mobile Galaxy S II that brought a "Qualcomm fix," along with some general security enhancements and Vlingo S Voice improvements. It looks like that update was delayed shortly after it started rolling out, as Team Pink just updated its support docs with details of the update with a set rollout date of January 31st, which is today.
A small, 11MB over-the-air update is on its way to T-Mobile's variant of the Galaxy S II this morning, which brings a few minor enhancements to the year-old device. Among those, you'll find a "Qualcomm fix," along with Vlingo S Voice improvements, and some general security enhancements.
Nearly two years ago, Samsung unveiled what would become one of the most iconic Android handsets of all time, and its powerhouse smartphone for the year: the Galaxy S II. This follow-up to the original Galaxy S brought the goods in a major way, further increasing Samsung's undeniable presence in the Android world. And now the company is updating it to Jelly Bean (Android 4.1.2).
One hundred million – that's a pretty massive number. And it's one that Samsung can now tout as a sales figure for the Galaxy S line as a whole. That's a combined number for the entire series: the Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, and Galaxy S III; no other Galaxy phones, like the Note, are included.
In order to further convolute the Galaxy series more than it already is, Samsung just brought the Galaxy S II name back from the dead by announcing the Galaxy S II Plus. The phone – which is already basically irrelevant – is a rehash of Sammy's 2011 flagship, albeit with a slight bump in spec and a new version of Android. Woo.
There's some disturbing news today on the Android security front: an vulnerability has been discovered for Samsung's Exynos 4-powered devices. While the related exploit is useful for the mod scene in that it can be harnessed to gain superuser permissions and root pretty much any device running on an Exynos 4 chip, it's also got some rather disturbing implications. According to an XDA member with the handle "alephzain", who developed the exploit, using this security hole can also grant an app access to all physical memory on a given device - basically, anything stored in RAM is fair game. The virtual directory for memory within the kernel, dev/exynos-mem, is wide open, apparently for access to various camera-related functions.
Did you think that the Galaxy S III was the only one getting all of Samsung's Jelly Bean attention? Not so! As it turns out, the company is also working on Android 4.1 for older phones, including but not limited to the...*deep breath*...Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch. A build has leaked out over on XDA of 4.1.1 in all its TouchWiz-ified glory that's ready for the flashing looking at, if you're feeling adventurous bored.
for the Galaxy S II on T-Mobile may have shaken things up a bit when it comes to NFC and ISIS, but it now looks like Samsung has also sneaked in a tweak dumbing down universal search. A similar "fix" was discovered in T-Mobile's version of the Galaxy S III 2 weeks ago, and it seems like Samsung is not taking any chances with its older sibling either.
While the tech world waits with bated breath for the conclusion of Apple's United States case against the world's most prolific smartphone maker, another case is just wrapping up in Samsung's home country of South Korea. The Wall Street Journal reports that a Seoul court found both Apple and Samsung in violation of each other's patents, with the former violating two of Samsung's patents and the latter violating one of Apple's.