Android 4.3 Premium Suite update for Galaxy Note2 and Galaxy S3 S4

Saumsung announced the Android 4.3 update is about to release in the coming weeks for Galaxy Note2, Galaxy S3 and S4. according to the announcement, the Premium Suite update will be rolled out today in US first by Verizon (read the official Samsung announcement for the update here)

this update adds KNOX, plus some enchancements for the camera, etc, while those highly expected new features from the Galaxy Note 3 are unlikely to be included completely but Group Play 2.5 is shipped in this update

Galaxy S4 new colors Blue, Brown, Purple, Red and Gold

Samsung is prepared to launch 4 new colors for Galaxy S4 in June: Blue Arctic, Brown Autumn, Purple Mirage and Red Aurora officially, plus gold, rose gold or platinum S4 by Goldgenie exclusively






the Blue Arctic S4 from NTT Docomo in Japan





watch it in youtube

a Brown Autumn Galaxy S4 was spotted in a video called 'Hi Hey Hello' on youtube published by the Samsung Mobile






currently the Red Aurora S4 is only available for AT&T in US






a Purple Mirage S4 probably looks similar to this S3 in Purple





and finally the Gold, Platinum and Rose Gold S4 by Goldgenie (image source: goldgenie.com)



Gold




Platinum




Rose Gold

Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE with 2GB RAM

the Galaxy S III LTE, SC-06D, equips with 2GB RAM and 32GB ROM but with a 1.5 GHz dual core processor only due to incompatibility with the Samsung Exynos processor and 4G LTE networks. NTT Docomo detailed the specifications of the next coming Galaxy S3 LTE features a 1.5 GHz dual core processor MSM8960, and will be available in June or July in Japan

on the other hand, the LTE version is believed to be shipped in USA and Canada also, while Verizon US will launch a LTE S3, SCH-I535, with a dual core Snapdragon S4 processor

Galaxy Note ICS XXLPY phone bricks - advice

UPDATE: Galaxy Note official ICS ZSLPF and XXLPY confirmed unsafe

not all phone bricks are irrecoverable. it depends what you have done before and what can be done next



A BIT OF ADVICE


there are two kind of phone bricks: soft bricks and hard bricks. in fact, soft bricks are relative easy and possible to recover but hard bricks are not recoverable even with JTAG recovery

soft bricks:
- you can still see the phone boots up with the Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000 logo
- the phone enters a boot loop, ie keeps rebooting after booted up
- you are able to enter the recovery mode by pressing and holding the volume up button, home button, and the power button
- you are able to enter the download mode by pressing and holding the volume down button, home button, and the power button
- you are able to enter the download mode with a usb jig
- your phone boots but with lots of FCs

hard bricks:
- you are unable to enter the recovery mode by pressing the keys
- you are unable to enter the download mode by pressing the keys
- you are unable to enter the download mode with a usb jig
- you only see a blank, black screen
- the phone does not response at all after power up and just like running out of battery, but you can feel it is warm somewhere near the camera at the back


do's and don'ts:
as time goes by, there are more and more victums. as to play safe, especially for normal users and those without warranty, it is suggested that:
- do not upgrade to ICS XXLPY yet
- do not flash any affected roms
- do not flash roms in the recovery, neither cwm nor stock XXLPY
- do not wipe or format disks in the recovery
- do not run factory reset in settings on your phone with leaked ICS or LPY based roms
- stick with a safe rom for now (at the moment, all Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread roms are REGARDED as safe)
- go back to one of the roms that confirmed safe if possible, but IF AND ONLY IF you know what you are doing and what you need to do


important:
if you want to go back to gb or other safe roms (no guarantee and do it at your own risks):
- use pc odin to flash a safe rom only
- not until a safe rom is flashed, do not use the recovery or factory reset
- no need to care about the yellow triangle thing, it is easy to get rid of it
- in case the phone FCs (force closes), don worry, they can be fixed
- you should bear in mind that rom flashing is dangerous itself


nevertheless, developers are trying to find out the root causes. so in the meantime, be patient and wait for a solution or newer and safer roms


finally, i want to end this with one more advice: do not have the wrong impression of offical roms or products are 100% safe and harmless. this is not the case in our real world. otherwise, there wont be any windows sp1/sp2... sp5, osx 10.0/10.3... 10.7, ios 4.0/4.0.1... 4.2, android 2.2.1/2.3.6... 4.0.3/4.0.4, linux kernel 2.6.27.62/2.3.35.13.. 3.2.17. there wont be any recall of defective cars, contaminated medicine and the like. you may argue that why ppl still using them? simple enough, just because we don have better alternatives but have to rely on them for now, at least


good luck to you all


back to Galaxy Note ICS XXLPY phone bricks - issues

Galaxy Note ICS XXLPY phone bricks - issues

UPDATE: Galaxy Note official ICS ZSLPF and XXLPY confirmed unsafe

some N7000XXLPY users reported phone bricked issues with this official ICS rom released by Samsung in Germany recently when they were trying to do a wipe or reformat, with cwm or stock recovery

actually this is an old issue that happened to some other devices like Samsung Epic 4G Touch SPH-D710, as well as all leaked ICS based firmwares for Galaxy Note including the international version GT-N7000, US AT&T SGH-I717 and GT-I9220 in China


DISCLAIMER
- this is just a message to inform ppl about possible threats and dangers
- this is only intended for raising your awareness
- this is not aims at scaring you or anyone in any way
- all i want is to express my own opinions
- this is not intended to say nor to find out who is liable or who is to be blamed
- any suggestion provided is for reference only
- phone bricking is not a must
- it does not mean you will brick your phone eventually or certainly
- it does not mean using XXLPY or cwm will brick your phone for sure
- you are not forced to do anything or not to do anything
- you should decide what you should do and should not do
- you are responsibile for what you are going to do
- no one can assure you anything, not excluding me
- i have flashed several leaked roms before a lot of times and currently with XXLPY on my phone at the time i am writing this


NOTICE
- it is up to you whether to ignore this post or not
- it is up to you whether to continue reading this post or not
- you are welcome to leave comments should you have any disagreement or question, but no flaming or bashing please





THE ISSUE


couple of days ago i found chainfire, an experienced developer, issued a warning message in his post:

WARNING: I have just been informed that LPY *does* suffer from the I/O bug. Do *not* use any CWM functions ! They are dangerous and may hardbrick your flash memory !

Deleting large files while fully booted may also cause problems with your flash memory.

at that time, there was one brick incident reported only with the XXLPY, but countless with leaked ICS roms including my SGN bricked weeks ago. and then, even upgrading via the OTA or FOTA (Firmware Over-the-Air) reported bricks. it is believed that there are bugs in the kernel, rom or the recovery, that can cause damages to the eMMC (Embedded MultiMedia Card) on the phones and make your phone unbootable


The eMMC is composed of the MMC (Multi Media card) interface, the flash memory, and the flash memory controller

eMMC is a standard for embedded memory devices that contain not only a data storage element (such as NAND flash memory), but also a controller for the storage element integrated on the same silicon die.

source: samsung.com


so far there is no evidence if this could be due to cwm or the stock rom, and the actual problem areas are yet to determine at the moment, but what we learnt is that problems can occur likely when the following actions is performed:
- doing a wipe in the *recovery mode
- formatting the partition(s) in the *recovery
- rom flashing in the *recovery mode that involve disk wiping or formatting
- resetting the phone by performing a factory data reset in the settings application

*including cwm recovery by chainfire, XXLPY stock recovery and leaked ICS roms recovery


some argued that wipe is safe and does no harm. but i found after reading the source codes, the wipe will in turn calls for a disk format (format_volume function). simply speaking, a disk wipe means disk formatting


however, the bricks and damages are not happening each time you do a wipe or disk format on your phone. no one knows when it will happen and no one knows if it will happen. personally, i flashed my phone for over a hundred of times with the leaked ICS roms without any problem, but finally i got my phone bricked (not relating to XXLPY). that is to say, may be you are lucky that you don have any problem so far, and may be i was lucky for flashing so many times without any problem, but you will never know what will happen next time and you wont realized you are one of the victums until your phone bricked


after reading the message from chainfire, i started to think this can be a diaster since the cwm is so popular that a lot of ppl are using it and now the developer had issued this warning. so, possibily this will affect a lot of users.

yes, i knew that the number of bricked phone was so tiny, and i understand rom flashing does involve risks, but i opted to post in a forum talking about this aimed at alerting users about this possible threat. i also suggested ppl to stay away from the affected roms until the problem is solved, or stick to their Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread rom for now. as a responsible forum member and developer, i believe this is not a bad thing especially for normal or non-experienced users by informing them about this. it was not for my own good but for the benefits of others and there is no gain for me at all


unexpectedly i saw some ppl flaming and said something not very nicely,

"even a 5-10% bricks is not an issue"
"you are scaring ppl with no evidence"
"i flashed more than 20 times with no problems and i am not scared"
"it is an official rom so it is totally safe"
"you are not a developer and you know nothing about development"

in less than an hour, i realized i was wrong. i was wrong for "no gain for me" but in fact i benefited from learning some english words and phrases which i will never have a chance to learn in my life from books, ever....

to be honest, i don mind these bashings since i believed i was doing the right thing. as i said,

what we know is the number of ppl suffered
what we will know is the number of ppl who suffered avoidable issues after reading this post
but what we dono is how many phones we saved

interestingly, someone then replied, "0 (zero saved)"


anyway, up to now there are more than 10 known soft bricks or hard bricks incidents, involving previous cm builds based on leaked ICS roms and the LPY rom. i can see some of the guys who disagreed with me before had reported phone bricks also


continue to Galaxy Note ICS XXLPY phone bricks - advice

Exynos 4 Quad for Samsung Galaxy S3 I9300?

UPDATE: Samsung Galaxy S3 unveiled with specifications and features

Samsung announced a new Exynos 4 Quad CPU at 1.4GHz recently before introducing the SGS3 or Galaxy SIII. it is the first processor built on the 32nm HKMG (High-k Metal Gate) technology based on the ARM Cortex A9 architecture.

this processor doubles the performance when compared with the previous 45nm processor but 20% less power consumption. and with the multi-core processing design, it means the four cores handle different tasks simultaneously and hence allowing users to perform more tasks in less time

more, the new Exynos 4 Quad processor can produce 30fps (frames per second) HD 1080p video recording and playback and equipped with an HDMI 1.4 interface



officials from Samsung also said this new processor will be used in the next Galaxy S generation, which will be unveiled in early May this year. this means it is very likely to be shipped with the Samsung Galaxy S3 running Android 4.0.3

however, it is rumored that this processor will be availble for international versions only, except the USA market

Galaxy Note ICS TwLauncher tablet mode preview

this is a modded Samsung ICS touchwiz launcher in tablet mode or tabletui for the Galaxy Note based on the leaked Chinese I9220 ZCLP6 Android 4.0.3 rom. all modifications were baesd on original Samsung files so it is a pure stock SGN TW launcher tablet mode experience in 212 dpi

i started this mod for an very attractive US$680 bounty for AT&T SGH-I717 initially, but my phone was not repaired yet and thus missed the chance to win the bounty. actually it is no fun to work with the smali files at all, so i stopped modding it after finishing the navbar part as the final piece of the puzzle

below are some of the screenshots

twlauncher untouched with 240 dpi	default ICS power off confirmation
stock ICS twlauncher menu	navbar added with 212 dpi
SPlanner widget works with Samsung TwLauncher (looks a bit weird atm)	popup menu for settings in navbar
settings in split mode
settings popup menu in landscape mode
SMemo widget running properly with Samsung TwLauncher

references:
Galaxy S3 Tablet UI multi windows per app dpi preview updates
Galaxy S3 I9300 tablet mode - TabletUI at 220 dpi preview

Galaxy Note Android 4.0.3 ICS preview

here is a preview of the official AT&T 4G LTE Galaxy Note, the US version of N7000, with Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich hours after the I717UCLC5 leaked


source: androidcommunity.com

watch it in youtube (source: androidcommunity.com)