Samsung Galaxy S2 owners can look forward to Jelly Bean 4.2.2 by way of the SlimBean team.
The latest version of the ROM comes from HardCorePawn who is one of the members over at XDA Developers. The ROM took its base from the Android Open Source project and this means that it offers plenty of customisation along with enhancements and features.
You do have to make sure that you are the owner of the international version of the handset. This is easy to check for in settings – about phone. You will also have to back up your device and you can do this with CWM or TWPR. You also have to have the USB drivers installed on the computer.
You should check that USB debugging has been enabled on the handset. This is done by going to settings Developer Options on Android 4 or later, or if you have Android 2.3 or later in Settings > Applications > Development. If you have Android 4.2 you can check in Settings > About Phone, scroll to the bottom and choose build number. You should then tap on the build number seven times and it will reveal the Developer options in settings, which were previously hidden. You can then tick USB debugging in settings – developer options.
Also check your handset to make sure that you have 80% left.
Should your device get into a boot loop you can go ahead and Wipe Cache Partition and Wipe Dalvik Cache and then try rebooting your device. Wait for about 10 minutes or so for the handset to settle down before using it.
If you want to go ahead and install the ROM follow the instructions which are set out below.
1. Connect the Samsung Galaxy S2 to the computer with the original USB cable
2. Without extracting, copy the downloaded ROM and Google Apps zip files to the root folder on the phone’s SD card
3. Turn off the phone and disconnect its USB cable from computer
4. Press and hold Volume Up, Power and Home buttons simultaneously until the Samsung logo appears on screen. Then release all three buttons for half a second and hold them again to boot the device into CWM recovery. Use Volume keys to navigate between options and Power key to select an option in recovery.
5. Take a Nandroid backup of the current ROM so that it can be restored later if the new ROM fails to work or you want to return to original ROM. To do a backup, choose Backup and Restore, and then click Backup on the next screen. Return to main recovery menu once backup is done.
6. Perform a full data wipe task as follows: choose Wipe Data/Factory Reset then click Yes on next screen to confirm. Wait for a few minutes until the data wipe process completes.
7. Return to CWM recovery main menu and click Wipe Cache Partition and wait until process is complete.
8. Choose Wipe Dalvik Cache under advance option.
9. Choose Install zip from SD card and then click Choose zip from SD card. Now, navigate to the Slim Bean Build 5 ROM zip file that you copied earlier. Confirm the installation by choosing Yes and the installation will begin.
10. After the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean SlimBean ROM is installed, repeat step 9. But choose the Slim Bean Google apps zip file instead of ROM zip to install Google apps.
11. Once Google Apps is installed, return to the main recovery menu and hit reboot system now to reboot the phone into the newly installed Slim Bean Build 5 ROM.
The first time that you reboot your handset it can take longer.
If you find that you want to put your old ROM back onto the device just boot to recovery and then enter back-up and restore and then go ahead and choose your original ROM.
Bear in mind that you will need to own the Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300, the Samsung Galaxy S2 i9100 or the i9100G version.
