I strongly recommend using this, even if you already backed up any irreplaceable data. Note! At this point, there is a backup/restore option on the ClockworkModRecovery screen. The SII requires you to hold down Volume Up, Home, and Power (all at once bring your extra fingers!) to do this, and you need to keep holding them down until you see the recovery screen. Having done that, I booted into recovery mode on the phone.
Instead, I used the interactive shell, exited it, and then pushed the image to the SD card: $ adb shell To push this onto the device SD card, the instructions give the command adb shell mount /dataĪccording to the docs this should indeed work, but I got an (unhelpful) error message from ADB. Next step was to download the relevant build for my device (again, note that this is device-specific! Check the location of the files for your own device on the wiki.).
This page (including the comments) got me sorted.) At this point, I had a custom recovery image on my device, which would allow me to install the CyanogenMod firmware. (A note: I was using my Mac laptop to do this rather than a Linux box, and ran into problems with an “ERROR: Claiming interface failed!” error. I then followed the wiki instructions to boot the phone into download mode and used Heimdall to push ClockworkModRecovery onto it. In my case (with a Galaxy SII), I downloaded the Heimdall Suite and ClockworkModRecovery to my laptop to get started. Unless you’re experienced, it’s best to try out a pre-built release first before starting down the DIY route. I’ll look here at the install process, but if you’re interested in building your own version, the CM docs are pretty helpful. The list of supported devices links to an install guide (to install a pre-built image) and a build guide (if you want to build your own image). The details of install will vary between devices. (Discovering that my phone was refusing to connect correctly to my laptop to do this further encouraged my modding efforts.) User data stored on the SD card should not be lost, but this sort of process is always a bit risky (and not all apps obey correct data storage expectations). If you have any irreplacable data on your phone that’s not already backed up elsewhere, now is a good time to back it up.
Read on for my experience installing CM on a Galaxy SII.Īs per CyanogenMod’s general disclaimer, you mod your phone at your own risk! Getting started
There are a few more reasons, too, why you might want to try CyanogenMod for me, the opportunity to lose a particularly annoying piece of proprietory software on my Galaxy S2 was a big gain. It also tends to give quicker access to updates. It provides some features not available in the vendor-supplied firmwares, it’s more customisable (if you want, you can build CyanogenMod for yourself), and it allows you to avoid the bloatware that comes with vendor firmware.
CyanogenMod offers a customised open-source firmware version of Android for a variety of phone and tablet hardware.