Samsung have decided that its Galaxy S3 Mini will no longer get any updates from the phone vendor. As such, a team of hackers known as CyanogenMod has taken in the S3 Mini and placed it under its care.
CyanogenMod has developed a custom Android 4.3 Jellybean ROM for the Galaxy S3 Mini and while it may not be official one, owners of the device can now get their hands on the update. More importantly, this Jellybean firmware is free of bugs and bloatwares.
Other tweaks to the original Jellybean include changes to the TouchWiz. This feature from Samsung is great but has been a burden to all the smartphones developed by the Korean company. As such, some changes to its settings have been done to make it much more efficient and reliable.
The custom Jellybean is also packed with virtual sound surround, Bluetooth Low Energy, Open GL ES 3.0, 2D/3D hardware acceleration, sensor functionality, wireless connectivity, all native tethering, CPU sleep mode, offline charging, support for the 64 GB SD card and high quality YouTube videos. On top of that, the issue with the 1GHz bug is also fixed.
Of course, installing a custom firmware is not recommended and owners who wish to update their device will have to accept the risks that come with it. If they wish to proceed, they can follow the instructions below.
1. Connect your S3 Mini to your PC using the USB cable.
2. Copy the CM 10.2 ROM and Google Apps package. Paste them onto the SD card of your phone without extracting any zip files.
3. Unplug the phone and turn it off.
4. Reboot your phone into recovery mode by pressing and holding the volume up, home and back keys at the same time until the Samsung logo appears.
5. While in recovery, make an Android backup of your present ROM. Select “backup and restore > backup” to save the ROM onto the SD card so you can restore your older ROM anytime.
6. Do a complete wipe. Choose “wipe data/factory reset” and “wipe cache partition.” Then select “advanced > wipe Dalvik cache.”
7. Once the wipe is done, install CyanogenMod 10.2 by selecting “install zip from SD card > choose zip from SD card”. Find the CM 10.2 you pasted earlier and confirm the installation.”
8. Once this is done, go back to the main menu while in recovery mode and select “reboot system now.”
9. The phone will now reboot. This might take five minutes or so before you see the home screen, so don’t worry.
Now, you’re Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is fully updated. You can start enjoying your Jellybean OS right away.
