Friday, December 27, 2013

[UPDATED] CELERITER!

Confused? Don't worry! Celeriter is a Latin adverb which means "quickly". Took me more than a minute to master the pronunciation but you may already be wondering, what is this guy talking about! Well today we are discussing yet another Android 4.4.2 KitKat flavor - The CeleriterRom.

Since I haven't really tested it quite enough, I'd let the developer describe it for you (for now of course!). Take a look at a couple of screenshots straight from the OP -

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

TURN YOUR GALAXY S2 INTO A NEXUS 5!

Yes you read it right! SuperNexus is here. Finally! For regular flash-o-holiks like me, this rom needs no introduction. But for those of you who are new to all this, Supernexus is a unique project which is determined to provide you with "THE STOCK NEXUS EXPERIENCE". No fancy mods, no "in your face" animations, no multi-window, no overclock, NO CUSTOMIZATIONS. Period. This will indeed turn your Galaxy S2 into a Nexus 5!

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

[UPDATED] MoKee Multi-Window!

UPDATED VIDEO REVIEW

Smartphones with HUGE displays are pretty common these days. Except Apple, all the other OEMs across all the platforms have pushed smartphone displays to 5+ inches through-out 2013. But not all of them managed to optimize the software for this particular change in hardware. Samsung debuted the note line-up (& the so called phablet category) back in 2011 and ever since then Samsung has remained the undisputed King in the phablet arena. So what really makes the note line-up stand out from the rest? The software optimizations!

Not entirely going into the details of note-optimized Touchwiz Ux, let's focus on one particular feature from this software suit : Multi-window! This feature enabled note users to run two apps simultaneously in the foreground and made better use of the bigger screen. Needless to say, it became quite famous in no time and was a must-have feature in every Samsung based custom rom for all the sammy devices.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

[UPDATED] THE CARBON FLAVOR

Yes it did start slowly but now, almost a month after the KitKat release, S2 android development is in full swing. A new rom keeps coming in every week & as of date we have almost 15 custom roms based on KitKat if not more!

Today the rom in focus is Carbon Rom. A worth mentioning fact about the rom is its developer. He's just a fifteen year old German student. "WOW", right?

Coming to the Rom itself, its based on Android 4.4.2 and it's working flawlessly with the New Android Runtime aka ART. Initial impressions are great. The rom is smooth and snappy without overclock and probably the FASTEST KitKat rom I have used to far.

Friday, December 20, 2013

[UPDATED] SLIM: HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE SEXY!

**Click HERE to watch the updated 4.4.4 SlimSaber Review

The title says it all! This time around we take a look at SlimKat. Although I'll be reviewing the SlimSaber build, even if you flash the official SlimKat, the look and feel will remain the same. I personally prefer SlimSaber. So coming back to the topic, Slimroms have always been a promising option. The early "beta" builds of SlimBean 4.3 were rock steady and ready for daily use. I have even reviewed Weekly Build 4 on my channel. Ever since then, the slim-team (If you will!) has been generating quite a buzz and they certainly don't disappoint with what they have in store for us when it comes to KitKat development.

GREENIFY: RENEW YOUR PHONE!

So what's the first thing we do after we buy a new phone? From the hardware point of view, most of us buy a Case slash Cover and a Screen guard to protect our investment. On the software part, we install a Task Manager. Nowadays there are many fancy names for these apps like Task Killer, Memory Manager, Battery Saver, Juice Defender, Memory Booster, Memory Cleaner, Memory Optimizer, RAM Booster, Clean Master, etc. etc. The list is endless! But despite the varying names and maybe a slight difference in the way these apps function, the primary reason behind installing such apps remains unchanged - TO SAVE BATTERY!

[UPDATED] PROJECT OMNI

Thanks to the great dev community for our S2, we have many mainstream custom rom projects like CM, MiUi, AOKP, Carbon, Slim, Liquid Smooth, CyanFox, PA, PACman, X-treme, etc. etc.  A new one (and quite famous apparently!) added support for S2 last month. PROJECT OMNI! The standout feature? "Multi-window". Omni generated quite a buzz as it became the first AOSP based Custom Rom to support Samsung's famous multi-window feature out of the box.

[REBORN!] Arguably the best KitKat Rom till date!


**Update/ Surprise: The dev just released 21st Jan build! Happy Flashing!

One fine day while browsing the forums as usual, I stumbled upon a thread. There was something different about this one. Usually a dev compiles a rom and publishes it in the forums but that wasn't the case with this one. Someone found this rom on one of the Korean Forums and just shared it on xda. AND ALMOST EVERYONE WHO CAME ACROSS THIS ROM JUMPED THE SHIP!

When this was the only KitKat rom available for our S2!

I still remember the time when this baby was born. November 11! While KitKat roms were popping up for all other devices, everyone was anxiously waiting for a release in the I9100 forums. And Wayland_ACE broke the ice with his unofficial CM11 build! First build wasn't booting while the second one did, it had a broken recovery. The development was swift and most of the bugs were ironed out in a week's time and that's when I decided to review it on my channel. My second video almost three months after uploading my first.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Welcome!

As the name suggests, this blog is all about Samsung's 2011 flagship - The Galaxy S II. I've this device for more than a couple of years now and so far it's been a wonderful journey from Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread to Android 4.4.2 KitKat.
Sadly most of the people nowadays classify Galaxy S2 as "OLD & INCAPABLE" hardware. I agree with the first part, yes it is old. Two and a half years in rapidly growing Smartphone industry HAS TO BE classified as "old" BUT INCAPABLE? HELL NO! Even today S2 runs one of the most graphics intensive games like Asphalt 8, Real Racing 3, Dead Trigger 2, etc. And as far as the benchmark scores are concerned, it scores as many points as those MediaTek Quad Core devices IF NOT MORE! One of the worth mentioning benchmark results are those of nenamark 2 where our 2011 flagship maxes out the benchmark with 58-59 fps, well almost! S2 is no slouch.
So while our S2 is not giving up on us, I think it's important we shouldn't give up on it either. Through this blog and my YouTube Channel I wish to keep you updated with the latest and greatest in the world of Galaxy S2 Android Development.
Happy flashing!