afraid of upgrades

[revdocken]

Hey guys, first of all thanks for all the help so far. You folks make beeing the new guy comfortable. Now for today's questions. I keep seeing all these threads about problems with upgrades of firmware, upgrades on kies, and they all mention one problem or another. I have an s2 19100 and every time I connect to my pc with a usb cord I get told that kies updates are available and would I like to upgrade (my kies is 2.3.2.12054-20) and i'm being offered version 2.3.2.12064-9 which I always refuse because of what I see on this forum. So far I have just used kies to transfer videos back and forth from my pc to S2 and my old version of kies seems to work just fine.
I need to know from you pro dudes is how does the upgrade balance against all the problems that seem to be happening to people. Also when I boot up my pc, i get a message saying "firmware for the 19100 has finished downloading, check which model you use (I thought 19100 was the model) and upgrade" so I must have started an ugrade before and then copped out of doing the installation of the upgrade. I guess I need to know what good this upgrade will do me and what it is.
Another whole different question. I understand now I can upgrade to ice cream sandwich. I assume that is separate and different than the kies upgrades I'm being asked to accept? And last but not least what is "Odin"
As you can see people I am really really flying blind here. So simple explanations work best with my limited knowledge.
Thanks as always for your kind assistance, revdoc

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[Ollie]

Hey guys, first of all thanks for all the help so far. You folks make beeing the new guy comfortable. Now for today's questions. I keep seeing all these threads about problems with upgrades of firmware, upgrades on kies, and they all mention one problem or another. I have an s2 19100 and every time I connect to my pc with a usb cord I get told that kies updates are available and would I like to upgrade (my kies is 2.3.2.12054-20) and i'm being offered version 2.3.2.12064-9 which I always refuse because of what I see on this forum. So far I have just used kies to transfer videos back and forth from my pc to S2 and my old version of kies seems to work just fine.

This upgrade is safe. All it is letting you know is that Samsung Kies itself has an update which fixes bugs, add features etc to the PC software itself.

I need to know from you pro dudes is how does the upgrade balance against all the problems that seem to be happening to people. Also when I boot up my pc, i get a message saying "firmware for the 19100 has finished downloading, check which model you use (I thought 19100 was the model) and upgrade" so I must have started an ugrade before and then copped out of doing the installation of the upgrade. I guess I need to know what good this upgrade will do me and what it is.

This is the upgrade for your phone which will move you from GingerBread to Ice Cream Sandwich. It will change your phone's interface a little, add functionalities, take some away, and bring you up to speed on the S2's newest firmware.

Whether it is a good move appears to vary from phone to phone. From what I have been seeing it appears that Google and Samsung have been skipping one of the most important steps in the upgrade process. The factory data resets.

What happens with Apple (I am no way endorsing their walled garden system) is that when a new firmware is made available you plug your phone into your computer, it creates a backup, then it wipes your phone followed by a fresh install from scratch. Afterwards you are given the option to restore from your backup or set the phone up as new.

Google skips those steps and performs the upgrade on the fly while trying to preserve all of your data during the upgrade. This has caused some problems with some phones. The problem is that there are no indicators whether your phone will upgrade flawlessly. One of our failed update threads has over 20,000 views. That says a lot right there.

Another whole different question. I understand now I can upgrade to ice cream sandwich. I assume that is separate and different than the kies upgrades I'm being asked to accept? And last but not least what is "Odin"
As you can see people I am really really flying blind here. So simple explanations work best with my limited knowledge.
Thanks as always for your kind assistance, revdoc

Odin is a tool designed by Samsung to flash firmwares onto their phones. It has been hood winked by thousands of users to load kernels that deliver root, custom firmwares (roms) that change the way the phone looks and feels, flash different modems to try to increase thier cell reception, and lastly to restore phones to stock that have gone awry (by something they flashed, a brainfart from the phone itself, or by Kies failing at an upgrade).

It is a powerful tool that can get you into a bind or out of a bind. Usually, simply following instructions makes the Odin experience a fast and easy one since it is not a complicated program to use. Most of the Odin failures come from people flashing a firmware/mod that wasn't intended for their model of phone. I have used it a lot and never had an issue. There is even a Mobile version available in the Market that lets you do everything directly on your phone as long as you are rooted and the phone is booting normally. I use it as well.

[grenefroggie]

To kind of touch on what Ollie has said, and what I have told many of the people I know personally that Android phones: MAKE A FREAKING BACKUP!!!!

From personal experience, the hardest lesson I learned when I was modding my phone was the first time I flashed a new firmware (ROM). On almost every tutorial you see, the first step is make a backup. While this mainly applies to rooted phones with unlocked bootloaders, the same still applies to stock phones. It has been a while since I have used stock anything. I just put 4.0.4 back on to my Galaxy Nexus, straight from Google. The very first question the damn thing asks when you do a new install is if you want to back the phone up to Google. There is NO reason not to. If the phone craps out, you do a factory reset, or in some cases have to flash the stock firmware, it will ask you as part of the setup procedure if you want to restore the phone. Again, there is NO reason not to.

Most of this applies to people who mod/hack their phones. I don't recall if there are options on the Samsung or Motorola (my first Android phone was an Atrix 4G) phones with their TouchWiz and MotoBlur.

Moral of the story: MAKE A BACKUP. Then factory reset the phone so there is nothing on it. Then upgrade your phone through Kies.

Ollie, if that is incorrect in any way, please let me know, but it has worked for me in the past. May not be universal. Personal experience here.

[Ollie]

That is absolutely correct.

Backup your phone with Kies and with the Accounts and Sync option in your phone's Settings app.

Factory data reset the phone.

Upgrade.

Factory data reset the phone again.

Restore your stuffs.

Sent from my GT-I9300

[revdocken]

O.k. guys I'm still not comfortable enough to do a firmware upgrade but I'll keep asking...I've been away from kies for a while but I just hooked up tonight and I'm being offered an upgrade to 2.5.0.12094_27 which I think I've learned from ollie that it's o.k. to do that as it's the same type as the as one I mentioned back at the beginning of this thread i.e. a normal kies upgrade.
I think I'm o.k. with that thanks to you guys. I'm also being told to upgrade to Firmware I1900XWK14/I9100CPWKH1/I1900XXRI1/I1900XWKI4 can you tell me what that is and how it will benefit me?
And last of all, when you guys talk about backing up my phone "with kies", does that mean using the backup/restart button at the top? I've never touched that and have only used import/export for music and videos. Also I understand I can synch my accounts in the phones settings, and then do "a factory reset" sorry to sound an idiot but how is that done?
And now just one last question. I currently don't have a sim card for Japan where I live (too expensive) I was just in the States and I also spend a lot of time in Thailand. I don't know why but whenever I saved a new contact in these places, when given the choice of where to save it I always chose the phone rather than the sim. Had I chosen the sim I wouldn't have to worry about backing up my contacts, they'd be on the sim. My question is, is there anyway I could now go back and save the contacts to those sims (which are still current) while I am in Japan. What I'm asking is could I pop in my Thai or States sim and while there's no service on them while I'm in Japan, is there some way to move the place I saved the contacts from the phone to these sims? Or am I just dreaming.
I hope I made enough sense here for you guys to help me out. As always thanks for your time.
Almost forgot will the factory reset wipe all the apps I've downloaded? If so how do I back them up?

[CR6]

Go ahead with the firmware update. It will only take a few minutes and it's pretty automated, so you shouldn't have any problems. As for what's in the update, that's hard to say but it's always good. (bug fixes, upgraded radio for better reception, more options and features added, etc)

Backing up through kies is always good to do, so go ahead and click that backup button up top.

As far as saving contacts on your sim card, im not real sure about that one. You're best bet would be too save them through Google. This way whenever you setup a new or existing phone, they will always download to your device once you log on. If you don't use Gmail, you can always save them to your sd card. To do that, you'll need to open up your contacts, click on the menu button, click on "import/export", from there you can export them to your sd card, usb storage, etc. You'll repeat the process to restore them, just click "import" instead of export.

Yes, a factory reset will wipe all of your apps. If you're not rooted, you can back them up with App Backup & Restore https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...life.appbackup
Or AppMonster https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...nie.appmanager
These apps will back them up to your SD card. Or you can simply open up the play store, under my apps and take a screen shot of your apps, save the screen shot to your sd card or email it to yourself so you can print it out to use as a reference later to go back and redownload them.
If you are rooted Titanium Backup is an excellent backup/restore app.

I hope i covered everything for you. Good luck and let us know if you have any problems.


tap'n

[revdocken]

Thanks as always, I'm still researching but I'm getting closer and closer to going for it thanks to you guys. Do you know anything about the app "safe backup" not the "safe backup root" app?

[CR6]

It looks nice. Never tried it personally, but it's got mixed reviews.

tap'n