Rooting, Installing Clockwork Recovery and Slimbean on the Samsung Galaxy S i9000

Korean girl not included

My housemates old phone, a 2010 model Samsung Galaxy S i9000 over time became unuseable and would freeze and/or crash. Factory resets didnt help apparently. Not sure if he lost data in this but he's now the owner of an iPhone and i volunteered to try and resurrect the device.

The thing was still on whatever was the last supported OS, in this case Android Gingerbread 2.3.6, with Samsung's awful cartoony TouchWiz UI over the top. I thought, why not get Android Jellybean 4.2.2 on this and breathe some life into it, and perhaps fix lots of problems at the same time.

As an iPhone owner myself i'm not too sharp when it comes to Android but i do have a Nook Color i've Jeallybeanized, so i've got some previous experience. Its quite a daunting thing if you've never done it before so I thought i'd make a note of it. Here's what I did.

1. Completely charged the phone.
2. (You will lose your data during this process so you may want to make a backup). As I was starting from scratch, I didnt pay too much attention to this.
3. Enabled USB DEBUGGING in developers option (Settings / Developers I think)
4. Installed Samsung USB Drivers: I got these from here (these are just the drivers so you dont need to install Samsung Kies).

Ok, after that I thought about the steps directly related to flashing the phone with a custom rom. I needed to root the phone, and secondly needed to install Clockwork Mod Recovery (aka CWM). I could do both of those using Odin, so I:

1. Downloaded Odin V.1.85, installed it and launched it.
2. Downloaded Galaxy S Root & CWM Recovery Package and extracted it (there is a .tar file inside).
3. Turned off the phone and rebooted in Download Mode (pressed Home+volume down and then pressed power while holding the previous 2 buttons). Kept these buttons pressed till I saw an Android Robot on my screen.
4. Next I connected my phone via USB CABLE, and wait till ID:COM box turned yellow in main ODIN interference on my screen.
5. Clicked “PDA” on main ODIN interference  and choose the file with the name “cf-root-xx_oxa_jw4-v4.4-cwm3rfs.tar” file in Galaxy S Root folder I downloaded and extracted in step 2. Waited for ODIN to load this file. Checked the “auto Reboot” and “F.Reset Time” boxes and then clicked ”start”. (Also made sure the “Re-partition” and “Flash Lock” were unchecked otherwise I could have bricked my phone.
6. Waited for the process to complete and the restarted my phone.

Job done! Halfway there! Now go and get a cup of Yorkshire Tea. You deserve it.

After that it was just a choice of which rom to choose. As i'd heard that the Galaxy S had limited memory and could get bogged down, and that Samsung chose not to release Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for it because that and the TouchWiz UI would leave it unusable, I looked for a rom that would be fast and cut down on the bloat. For this I chose Slimbean. (I also had my eyes on CyanAOSP and SuperNexus).

All I needed to do now was get the rom and Google Apps package on an SD Card and install them from the CWM boot menu. So this is what I did:

1. Formatted a microSD card in FAT32
2. Downloaded the latest Slimbean custom rom
3. Downloaded the matching Google Apps package from the same site
4. Put both files (still zipped) into the root of the SD. 

Ready to boot up the phone and install!

1. I booted up the phone into the Recovery Mode (You can enter Recovery Mode by pressing volume up & the home button, and holding both simultaneously while pressing the power button)
2. Performed a full data wipe in ClockworkMod recovery. After that selected “flash zip from SD card” and pressed the Home button to select it. I used the volume up and down to move around.
3. Pressed home button to “choose zip from sdcard”.
4. Selected the Android 4.2.2 ROM zip file that I copied to my SD card with the help of the volume keys. I had to browse to "External SD Card" first. Confirmed the process and the installation procedure started. it didn't take very long!
5. Repeated this step for the Google Apps zip file as well.
6. After all this process I clicked on “++++ Go back” and rebooted the phone by selecting “reboot system now” from the recovery menu.
7. The device booted up!

One thing to note was that when I did it the first time, I forgot to do the full wipe and the install process got stuck with a "Semaphore" logo on the screen and I had to remove the battery and then get it back into the CWM and do the wipe, and then do the install again.

Everything seems to work just fine so far. the most difficult thing was finding good pages on how to perform it. These custom rom makers assume everyone knows how to do it!

Anyway, I'm just passing on these instructions so I hope they help!

Depeche Mode Songs Of Faith and Devotion 20 years on

Songs of Faith and Devotion was released 20 years ago this spring. It was a difficult album for the band who probably had no idea how to follow the massive success of Violator 3 years previous. It was a big departure from the synth-laden electronics of Violator and had -shock-horror- real drums played by Alan Wilder, who's last album with the band this was. Recorded over 8 months in Madrid in 1992, with Gahan coming out of a divorce and hooked on drugs, it was a difficult process.

The band and label Mute Records pushed the boat out and promoted the pants off this album, releasing four singles and over 20 remixes from the cream of the crop of upcoming and established artists such as Portishead, Brian Eno, William Orbit, Meat Beat Manifesto, Renegade Soundwave and others. They again employed the magnificent Anton Corbijn to handle the visuals.

I remember the release date. It was a few days before my birthday and I was waiting outside the record shop and went straight back home, skipping lectures at the University to listen before my housemate who was also a massive fan. I was already prepared for the guitar of I Feel You, and the recorded-in-one-take string laden Martin gore vocal of One Caress but after the first listen, I must admit I was disappointed. It wasnt Violator II. In fact, it was a massive departure from the three previous albums. However, upon repeated listens, especially on headphones, this album came alive and the production was so clean and yet complex and layered which revealed something new with each listen. I found it to be quite a slow affair and the faux-gospel annoyed (Condemnation, Get Right With Me, Judas). But with Rush, Higher Love, Walking in my Shoes and Mercy in You along with some inspired remixes of half of the album it has grown on me over the years and I still go back to it.

hidden CD inlay if you were lucky enough to buy an early edition.

I think over these past 20 years it has stood the test of time and it doesn't sound like the rest of 1993. That summer I went with my housemate and we saw Depeche Mode at Crystal Palace and an early glimpse of a newly tattoed Gahan and was the beginning of an epic 14 month tour that would eventually tear the band apart for almost 3 years, and almost kill Dave Gahan with a drugs overdose. Andy Fletcher also quit the tour in April 1994 due to "mental instabilities". 

You really need to watch the Devotional tour video. Its a fantastic display of a band with amazing sound complemented by great visuals (by Anton Corbijn). At times Dave Gahan looks like he's lost his marbles and does dive into the crowd during In Your Room.

Here's a site that has links to a recording of the San Francisco show in 1994 (soundboard) featuring lots of SOFAD tracks. 

And here's my favorite track from the album: