Unofficial upgrade guide to Android 2.2(Froyo) for Samsung Galaxy 5 (I5003) in India

Disclaimer:-

This is my experience of upgrading Samsung Galaxy 5 I5003 to Android 2.2 (Froyo) release. Before attempting the below steps, kindly understand the risk associated with this. This voids your warranty and may even brick your phone, so kindly do it at your own risk. I have no affiliation to Samsung, Android, XDA or samfirmware.com

Do take a backup of all your stuff before performing the update as all data, applications would be wiped off. (The application which you bought on the Android Market, may be downloaded again but again a backup would not harm).

Credits:-

• XDA Dev Forum especially the link http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=781149 based on which this article has been written.
• www.SamFirmware.com – Site which contains the link for the firmware.

So you bought a shiny new Samsung Galaxy 5 I5003 in India, but are pretty frustrated by the fact that it still ships with Android 2.1 whereas Android 2.2 has been around for around 8 months. In addition to giving a shiny new fast UI Android 2.2 offers 2 new features which all of us are looking forward to

• Wi-Fi Tethering
• Ability to install apps on the SD card instead of Phone Memory (which is just around 150 MB for Samsung Galaxy 5 handset).

Not sure about the future of official firmware upgrade from Samsung (as they have a similar priced phone in Samsung Mini launched with Android 2.2), I decided to take the plunge and install a custom Firmware for Android 2.2 on Samsung Galaxy 5. Following is the step by step instructions which I followed

1. Download and unzipped Odin and Ops file as linked on the forum http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=781149
2. Next question was a tricky one, that which firmware should be used for my phone. I started with the Asia version of the firmware (I5508ZNJP3 Android 2.2 - Froyo (Asia)) , but the touch screen would not work on Samsung 5 (I5003) phone in India as it is built for resistive touch screen and not a capacitive touch screen.
3. Finally I zeroed down on the USA firmware (I5500LUYJP2 Android 2.2 - Froyo (USA)) for which the installation process went pretty smoothly.
4. Rest of the steps have to be followed as mentioned http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=781149 except Step #2 where we have been told to select multiple files. This is not the case while updating to this firmware as we would just extract a single tar file from this rar file. As a result we need to select “One Package Option” and then select the tar file as the last option (Screenshot to be attached)
5. Do not forget to do a factory reset after installation is successful by pressing the keys *2767*3855#
6. After this your language would be set to Spanish, to set it back to English go to “Settings” menu from the home screen and select the 11th option from the top which contains the icon “A” and select the language English. Kindly note that this firmware version does not contain any Indian languages.

Voila you have a shining new Android 2.2(Froyo) running on your Samsung Galaxy 5.

Problems Solved

1. You can finally install applications on the Memory Card (SD)
2. Wi-Fi Tethering is built out of the box.
3. The nasty alarm problem seems to have been solved since the past few days http://vikram-kumar.blogspot.com/2011/02/alarm-problem-in-android-21-samsung.html

Bugs in this firmware

1. The icons for the applications installed on the SD card go away after restart. This can be circumvented by installing an application like “Launcher Pro” from the Android Market http://market.android.com/details?id=com.fede.launcher. Alternatively you could also stop TWLauncher (Samsung Touch Wiz) service from Settings  Manage Applications. Once you go back to the home menu, it restarts on it’s own and brings back the lost icons.

2. Some people have reported the compass to be broken on this firmware, though I haven’t use compass nor do I plan to use it hence can’t confirm this.

Am planning to upload videos, pictures for the same soon.

Android - No Google Navigation in India ? No Problems WAZE is here to stay

Undoubtedly for my Android 2.1 powered (which has been hacked now to uninstall the unofficial Froyo 2.2 firmware) new Samsung Galaxy 5 had been a welcome change for me, after almost 10 years of Nokia use. Overall it was a good move, except the fact that Google Maps still does not provide Voice navigation for India on its Android platform. This seems pretty strange since India is definitely one of the emerging markets.

Being addicted to voice based Navigation, I stumbled across Waze (http://world.waze.com) for Android. I had used Waze on my Symbian device before, but was not impressed primarily due to it's sluggish behaviour on the underpowered handset.

But once I installed Waze on my Samsung Galaxy 5 device, I was in bit of a pleasant surprise. The voice based navigation works as a charm, and POI (Points Of Interest) search also fetches results from Google.  Additionally at the time of writing I guess Waze is the only navigation software providing real time traffic updates (Based on Social collaboration).

Waze also provides other regular features like your speed, ETA, time remaining for travel etc. Also it is supposed to use most frequently used routes and propose new routes accordingly.

On the flipside the maps are not stored locally(This is one luxury which was only available with Nokia OVI Maps, even Google Maps currently does not support this), though the data transfer is not humongous.

Two thumbs up for WAZE and definitely a must try, if you would love using GPS on your Android Handset in India.

Alarm Problem in Android 2.1 | Samsung Galaxy 5 driving me crazy

Though a good phone to own, Samsung Galaxy 5 currently running on Android 2.1 is actually driving me crazy. Except the first day the alarm never rings, even when it rings the volume is set to 0 which possibly does not make much sense of the alarm. 

For today have tried the solution #47 in the attached link http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1109 . Hoping it does solve the problem for you. Anybody else facing the same problem?

Android 2.2 update coming to Samsung Galaxy 5

Finally some good news for Samsung Galaxy 5 owners. Apparently the Samsung team is already working on the Android 2.2 update (Froyo) for Samsung Galaxy 5 and the same may be out sometime soon. Though the below post mentions about i5500, the name by which Samsung Galaxy 5 is known in Europe, pretty confident (or optimistic :-) ) that the update would also be available to the Indian version Samsung  Galaxy 5 (i5503)

http://www.samfirmware.com/apps/blog/show/5995922-froyo-for-i5500-will-come-soon-