After updating my Samsung Galaxy SII to Jelly Bean a couple of weeks ago, Samsung pushed even newer firmware (I9100XWLSD) to my phone which is the best of all official Samsung ROM’s to date: with the update JuiceDefender was able to squeeze over 50 hours out of my Samsung Galaxy S II battery:
Damn, can’t shut down my phone to switch to “download mode”, it just reboots.
Yay, re-inserting battery while holding Volume down, Home & Power switches the phone to download mode after all, flashing with Odin!
Damn, flashed and rebooted, but installation wizard hangs, rebooting.
Yay, installation wizard completes after all.
Damn, ADW settings screwed (widgets & some shortcuts MIA)
Yay, almost done configuring ADW (except for the tethering shortcut on my desktop, can’t seem to reinstate that).
Damn, no keyboard selection in notification bar, so no Swype!
Yay, Swype available after all, hidden in “Language & Input” configuration.
So does Jelly Bean put the old S2 on the same level as the S3? Not really, some advanced S3-features aren’t included, think the ones in the Premium Suite for S3 that Samsung released a couple of months ago, especially “multi-window” (which might make less sense the smaller S2 display anyway). Both the Calender application and the mail-client (for my Exchange-mail) changed. Samsung replaced Calender with their own S Planner, which has a more skeuomorphic UI which doesn’t fit with the rest of the OS. Good thing you can install the default Android Calendar from Google Play. Mail got slightly better, with a nice little refresh-button and a timestamp showing when the last connection occurred (I don’t do push mail). But most importantly: Jelly Bean does feel more smooth (thanks to Project Butter) and at first sight battery life seems better as well. So, yeah, I’m happy!