Sonntag, 20. Oktober 2013

=== Free your Galaxy Tab 2 ===

First of all i am happy that i finally got rid of that stupid samsung androidlike version and now running a fully optimized android system 4.2.2 as it's meant to be. Android 4.2.2  needs much less power to operate. hence making the battery life from nearly a day up to 4 days.

Read carefully and i really recommend doing the flashing step with linux. i tried it several times with windows 7 and windows 8 but failed. You might
think the windows  way might be the more aproven way to do that. But i failed every single time i tried to do that.

Some additional statement:

  • freeing your phone is easy enough. However you should be fully aware about knowing what you are doing. If anything goes wrong i am not responsible for bricking your device.
  • Make sure that you have a fully charged battery or at least at 80 % battery charge.
  • I will use an external device and install the mod from there.
  • I used opensuse 12.3 for flashing the device with clockworkmod but other *nix based operating systems will also work.

__What we need__
(0) The tablet obviously and an external micro sd card.

(1) Download the clockworkmod

(2) Download the cyanogenmod

(3) [Optional] If you want to use your android devcice with google apps you have to download this from here . However this is not neccessary. There is an gpl alternative package manager for android called f-droid available

(4) Download the heimdall suite

(5) [Optional] If you download the cyanogenmod to pc. And i realy recommend doing that  you need to put the installer together with the clockworkmod to
your device. Install the Software datacable app to your android still 4.0 device 

__How we do it__
(1) [Optional] You should have donwloaded cynogenmod as well as the google apps package to your pc. Make sure these files are not corrupted by verifying it's md5 checksum. You can do this by typing

md5sum Mod.img

After verifying everything is fine you can set up a connection from your pc to your tablet with data cable and send the data to the root tree of your external device.

(2) Untar and verify heimdall. i use the x86 version The x64 did for some reason not work for me. Therefor if you are using x86_64 architecture, on suse
you should do

zypper in libusb-1.0.0-32bit

to install the 32 bit libraries of libusb from suse. rpm -ql libusb-1.0.0-32bit will reveal that the location of the needed library is /usr/lib/libusb-1.0.0.so.0. Simply copy this file (not move!) to the directory where the heimdall binary has been extracted to.

(3) However you obtained the files. Cynogenmod and if needed gapps should be put to the root tree of the external card of your android device. That should
be /mnt/extSdCard.

(4) Power off the device. And keep holding the volume down key. This will boot the Samsung Galaxy Tab into download mode. Accept the disclamer and be aware of the warning. When the tablet is in download mode connect it with the computer using the usb cable shipped by your vendor.

(5) Put the clockworkmod into the same directory where the heimdall binary has been placed. Now execute the following command as root:

heimdall flash --recovery <recovery.img> --no-reboot "

The --no-reboot Option is important since samsung overrites the tablet with it's own bootloader. There should appear a blue gauge indicating that the clockworkmod recovery is transfered and installed.

(6) Now boot the device in to recovery mode. DO NOT REBOOT THE DEVICE. by pressing the Volume up and the Power button.

(7) Select wipe data/factory reset and Install zip from sdcard select the cyanogenmod file and wait until the installation has finished.


After this has finished you may optionaly install the gapps. However there is no need for that.

__Good to know__
If you want to be absolutely free you skip the installation of gapps and just use the f-droid  application manager. Which will give you access to all the free software apps. For example the Hackers Keyboard will give you access to a full featured keyboard as you know it from your computer.

Rooting your device is great but you should however install a firewall and start managing your autostarts. I recommend to you intalling the Autostarts and
the Droidwall package.

Also a backup solution would be great. The best way i found so far is Helium from clockworkmode which will also break my privacy rules. Not very satisfing.

LINKS:
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_p3110
http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=stable&device=p3110
http://goo.im/gapps
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.fdroid.fdroid&fdpage=8