Upgrading Cupcake 1.5 to Galaxo 1.6.3.3. Step-by-step tutorial
Disclaimer:
I got most of this information in various forums, I don’t really
remember all of them, but there are some places that you should go visit
cause they are full of useful information.The first is http://www.drakaz.com/
that’s where the Galaxo ROM came from. Check their download section for
newer ROMS (2.1 coming soon) and stuff, plus those guys are awesome;
you should support them if you can. Then we have http://androidforums.com, http://www.androidwiki.de and http://www.iandroid.co.il, lots of good information can be found there.
Also,
this process will probably void your warranty and could potentially
brick your phone (as in, render it completely useless). I do not assume
any responsibility for anything that happens to your phone, follow this
tutorial under your own risk. (I must say though, if you follow the
instructions properly, everything should be fine).
Background:
So I recently acquired a Samsung Galaxy i7500 from Orange in Israel. But
because Google hasn’t written their own Hebrew support, the cellular
companies here in Israel developed their own code together with Samsung
Israel (menus, keyboard, fonts, etc.). The problem is that they are
keeping the Hebrew code to themselves and are not planning on sharing it
or releasing any updates for the
software (I called Samsung Israel and
they confirmed that the only software they support and will support, is
the pre-installed Cupcake 1.5). Why would they help you in any way?
Since you’re “depending” on their software for Hebrew support, they can
just “make you” buy a newer phone… or so they thought!
I looked around in hundreds (literally) of forum posts and tutorials
trying to figure out, first, how to “get root” so I could try to
uninstall all the useless and unrequested software that came
pre-installed and locked into the phone.
There I started to learn about upgrading the phone to Donut 1.6, but
still, Hebrew was not supported. After reading many different confusing
posts on the Israeli Android forum (
www.iandroid.co.il) I found some posts that were actually helpful.
Here, you will find my simple step by step tutorial for dummies on how to upgrade your Cupcake 1.5 to Donut 1.6 (Galaxo 1.6.3.3), how to add Hebrew support (not for menus, only for reading/writing Hebrew and to send/receive sms) and restore your 3G internet connection provided by Orange Israel.
Please
download all the files to your computer before you start doing anything.
Once you have all the files you can be sure you can proceed.
STEP 1 (ADB drivers):
You need to install the ADB drivers (Android Debug Bridge). You’ll need those to operate the Android SDK correctly. – Terminology
is unimportant; just follow this tutorial step by step and you’ll be
fine, but I’ll try to give you details so you know what is going on.
- When
I first tried to do this, I did it in my “state-of-the-art” DualCore
@3.2Ghz, 6GB RAM, Windows7 Ultimate 64bit computer. Only to find out
that the 64bits Windows versions (XP, Vista, Server and 7) have problems
recognizing these drivers. It can still be done, but it requires a lot
more effort (look here for help). So my recommendation is: Do this in a 32 bit Windows!
I’m using Windows 7 32 bits (x86), so I’ll continue this tutorial
assuming you have the same operating system… it should be very similar
(if not identical) to other 32bits versions of Windows.
Go to your Galaxy, go into the Settings, select Applications, then
Development, then tick USB debugging. Now plug it into your computer.
Some drivers will automatically install, give it some time until the
little window that scans for drivers is done doing its thing.
Open up the device manager.
You should see an unknown device with a yellow exclamation mark. Right-click it and select update drivers.
Select “Browse my computer”.
Select “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”.
If you see a list of devices and you have to pick one, don’t select
any and just click next again. Then, click “Have Disk”. Browse to the
“usb_driver” folder that you put on your desktop before, then select the
x86 folder (which means 32-bits) and in it select “android_usb.inf”.
Your device should now have the required drivers.
If you still have problems with your computer recognizing your phone, don’t worry, we still have options:
1. Install “Samsung New PC Studio”, that will install some more drivers that could help.
2.
Download
and install “Droid Explorer”, that will also install more drivers and
it’s an AWESOME program (explore root files, install/uninstall apps,
backup, screenshots, etc.).
3.
Download more drivers here – These are other drivers that I found around the internet, I don’t know exactly which one worked for me, but one of them did.
STEP 2 (Placing the Recovery, Update and .tar files)
You’re going to need these files:
I suggest saving all of those to the desktop, to avoid confusion.
- Start by placing the
“android-sdk-windows” folder on the root of your C: drive. The place
doesn’t really matter, but you’ll have to type the path into a command
prompt later, so if you follow my example, place it in the root of your
C: drive.
- Extract the files located inside
the “RECOVERY_4.6.3.zip” file. You now have “recovery.img” and
“RECTOOLS.tar.gz”. Take “recovery.img” and place it in the “tools”
folder of the “android-sdk-windows” folder (ie:
C:\Android-sdk-windows\tools\).
- Now, rename “Galaxo_V1.6.3.3.zip” to “update.zip”.
- Then, extract “Samsung.tar” from “I7500XEFJB2.zip” “I7500XEJC6.zip”.
- Connect your phone to the
computer via usb, pull the dropdown notifications menu and click on
“Select to copy fies to/from your computer”. Now in your computer open
the file manager (My Computer) and you should see 2 new drives. They are
the internal and external sd cards of your Galaxy.
- Take “update.zip”, “Samsung.tar”
and “RECTOOLS.tar.gz” (the last one was in RECOVERY_4.6.3.zip), and
place them on the root folder of both drives (SD cards). Do not put
these files inside any folder.
STEP 3 (Flashing Firmware with Odin)
To check if your phone is being recognized by your computer and that
the Windows drivers are working as they should, follow these steps:
1. Open a Command Prompt (Windows key + R, type cmd and press enter; or Click
on the Windows “start” button, click on “run” and type “cmd” and press
enter; or search for “cmd” in the start menu and click on “cmd.exe”)
2.
Go to the directory where the SDK is located (usually
C:\android-sdk-windows\tools\) and with your phone connected through the
usb cable, type “adb devices” and press enter.
If everything is working, you should see a message like this:
List of devices attached
I7500xxxxx device
If you don’t see this message, there probably is a problem with the drivers, go back to Step 1.
2. Now open Odin Multi Downloader as administrator (right click on the .exe and select run as administrator – if you don’t do this, it won’t work.)
You should see on the Message box the following messages:
<1> Added!!!
<1> Detected!!!
- Click on OPS and select the Orion.ops file that was included in the Odin_3.98.rar file.
- Click on BOOT and select the I7500XEJC6-BOOTLOADER-CL209906.tar file (extracted from I7500XEJC6.zip)
- Click on PHONE and select the I7500XEJC6-PHONE-CL209906.tar file (extracted from I7500XEJC6.zip)
- Click on PDA and select the I7500XEJC6-PDA-CL209906.tar file (extracted from I7500XEJC6.zip)
- Click on CSC and select the I7500SERJC6-CSC-CL209906-SER.tar file (extracted from I7500XEJC6.zip)
3. Now shut down your phone, make sure it’s connected to your computer via USB.
4.
Start your phone in “Download Mode” by pressing and holding the “Volume
down, OK and Power” buttons. You should see an SD card blue icon and a
message that says “Downloading”.
In Odin, look at the Message box, it should say again
<1>Added!!!
<1>Detected!!!
5. Press the START button on Odin
- If the phone seems to be stuck in the Samsung logo (more than 7
or 8 minutes), do not worry! Take out the battery and restart the phone,
leave it connected to the usb and let it restart. If you’re still
stuck, restart the phone in recovery mode (press and hole Volume down,
Answer and Power buttons while turning on phone.) When you see a
triangle icon with an “!”, press the “menu” button. The phone will
perform a Wipe and then restart.
Let the phone restart and you should see STATUS OK in the Message box of Odin.
6. Now you have the newest Firmware version on your phone… but that’s not enough, time to get Galaxo!!! (You
may notice your phone is in Russian at this point, do not worry, it’s
just the default Locale of this ROM. No need to change it because we’re
about to install Galaxo on top of it).
STEP 4 (Recovery and update)
1. Power off your phone and leave it connected via USB.
2. Open a Command Prompt (Windows
key + R, type cmd and press enter; or Click on the Windows “start”
button, click on “run” and type “cmd” and press enter; or search for
“cmd” in the start menu and click on “cmd.exe”).
3. Go to the directory where the SDK is located (usually
C:\android-sdk-windows\tools\). If you didn’t put the Android SDK on
the root of your C: drive, you’ll have to modify this line and put the
actual path.
Now type “fastboot flash recovery recovery.img” without pressing enter just yet (notice that the word “recovery” appears twice – I almost got stuck here myself for not paying attention.)
4.
Boot your phone into fastboot mode, to do so press and hold both the
Call button (bottom left) and Power button (bottom right) keys at the
same time, until you see on the phone that you are in fastboot mode.
You’ll have about 15 seconds to press enter on the command prompt on the
computer. If it works, you’ll see a message like the one on the image
below. If it doesn’t work then you just see the “waiting for device”
message on the command prompt; your phone will automatically restart
after 15 seconds into normal mode. You’ll have to power down and repeat.
If things are working as they should, you should see this in the command prompt window:
- When I tried to do this the first
time, it wouldn’t do anything, just reboot. It would wait for the
device, then my Galaxy would boot normally. To solve this, open the
device manager on your computer and turn the Galaxy off again. You are
going to boot into fastboot mode again (press and hold the call and
power buttons), you’ll have about 15 seconds to check the device manager
(open it beforehand), and see if there’s a new device that needs
drivers. Mine was Android 1.0 (with a yellow exclamation mark, meaning
that there are no drivers). You’ll do the exact same thing as you did
with the ADB driver, using the exact same driver (right click the
unknown device, select: “update the driver”, “select from a list”,
“next”, “Have disk”, “Browser”, then find the same “android_usb.inf”.
Check the beginning of the guide if you don’t remember what to do.)
- Tip: copy the path of the
“usb_driver” path (C:\Users\Name\Desktop\usb_driver) to your clipboard,
that way you can just paste it when you’re looking for the file, instead
of having to browse to get to the driver folder.
5.
Next step is to boot again, but this time in recovery mode. To do so,
press and hold the “Lower volume button”, the “Call button” and the
“Power button”. If it works, you’ll see a green menu with lots of
choices. You’ll be done in 4 more steps:
1.
Select “Wipe data/Factory reset”. It’s going to erase all your applications and settings, but it shouldn’t touch anything saved on your
SD card (such as pictures, music, saves, etc). It’s important to do this; otherwise the phone will not work properly.
2. Select “Apply sdcard:update.zip”. – This step will install Galaxo on your phone.
3. Select “Restore G.Apps”. - This will install the Google Applications on your phone.
4. Reboot and enjoy your new Galaxo!
If the phone gets stuck on the Android screen, wait for about 10
minutes, and then if it’s still stuck, pull out the battery and boot
again. If it still doesn’t work, you can try again, or boot into
recovery and try to “apply the sdcard:update.zip” again and restoring
the Google apps rebooting between, and trying another wipe after that.
Look for more help on
www.androidforums.com
