galaxy | digital nomad

Installing Custom ROM on Galaxy S4 International from Ubuntu

Post author:Leo Gaggl
Post published:July 22, 2013
Post category:documentation mobile telework / digital nomads
Post comments:6 Comments

Or as an alternative title "Liberating your Galaxy S4 Hardware from Samsung Bloatware". Unfortunately there is lots of (ad-infested) blogs and forums with dodgy pieces of information on this topic and I found it pretty hard to get descent concise information. So hopefully this might help some poor Linux User liberate their phone. Whilst this has been tested on a Samsung GT-I9505 S4 International LTE device (JFLTEXX series) it should be applicable to other similar Samsung phones that are not fastboot capable (ie. all but the Galaxy Nexus range). by Janitors NOTE: If you have encrypted your device do yourself a favor and do a factory reset BEFORE you start the process (otherwise you will be stuck in a boot-loop as the encryption key will be gone and the device will not start without it). See note below to recover to stock Samsung image if you need to. Rooting This area is the hardest to get decent (Ubuntu relevant) information. However (contrary to some forum entries out there) Heimdall is the most workable solution to use from Ubuntu - binary .deb packages are available from https://bitbucket.org/benjamin_dobell/heimdall/downloads. There is both a commandline package as well as a GUI available for Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 as well as other Linux distros. Note [2014-11-24]: Had to upgrade my daughters S4 Mini and I noticed that Heimdall is now in the default UBUNTU Repositories. You can install simply by 'sudo apt-get install heimdall-flash' now. Make sure the device has Developer mode enabled Go to Application…

Galaxy Nexus Firmware Upgrade on Ubuntu (manual)

Post author:Leo Gaggl
Post published:May 28, 2012
Post category:documentation mobile
Post comments:17 Comments

As a Galaxy Nexus Owner I have been waiting for months for an OTA (over the air) upgrade to the factory installed Firmware (4.0.2). I am finally sick of waiting and complaining to Google (an absolute lost cause). After some research it turns out that (contrary to popular opinion) not every unlocked Google Nexus actually has the 'official' Google Firmware. Some of them have a Samsung variant (WTF !?) of the firmware. Now I really don't want to get off the technical topic, but I personally think that this means Google is misleading their most loyal customer base. The reason I chose a Nexus device over the (from a hardware perspective) superior HTC One X was the fact that they were supposed to have the official Google Firmware and I did not have to wait forever for bugfixes from the manufacturers. There are a reportedly several different versions out there. Google's 'official' build for the GSM version of the Galaxy Nexus is named 'yakju'. Samsung builds 'yakjusc', 'yakjuxw' and 'yakjuux'. While they appear mostly the same, only Google’s yakju build is likely to get updates as they happen. Go figure why there was a need for others ... :( To find out which version your Nexus uses you can use this key combination (in the phone app) *#*#4636#*#* or for a more permanent option grab "Android System Info" from the Google Market. Disclaimer: this procedure obiously has the potential to 'brick' your mobile. Only attempt this if you are absolutely…

Accessing Samsung Galaxy Nexus as USB Media Device Ubuntu 12.04

Post author:Leo Gaggl
Post published:May 7, 2012
Post category:documentation mobile
Post comments:0 Comments

To use a Samsung Galaxy Nexus as a media device (MTP) there is a utility called gMTP. sudo apt-get install gmtp mtpfs mtp-tools NOTE: Unfortunately there is a bug in the 64-bit version at the moment (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mtpfs/+bug/936165) - which means it's not all that useful to me at the moment.