I started, as probably many techies, to learn some information about the samsung android mobile basic procedures. I won’t get into the eternal mambo-jumbo about what is better iOS or Android…. Yet, I will write some details about what was my learning curve in the android EcoSystem.

How deep can it goes?

Well, although I am a programmer, and rad some code on both iOS/Android. These systems are composed of many seperate parts — which each got its own purpose. The type of handling I am doing is better linked with system administrators, when talking about linux systems. Yet, programmers, that program for this environment probably know all the twiks and issues with the environment as well.

My android crashing bug:

It seems that although I bought my device from a store after updating my device via samsung KIES. It caused the device too boot, load the samsung logo, and get stuck on it.

When this took place on the first time, I just sent it to the store and they fixed it: Yet, I wasn’t about to do that after the second time it appeared… Again same symptom. I decided that this time, I will fix the problem by my own, no matter what! It would save time and effort * connecting the mobile distributor for fixing it, and * I would learn some tech geeky thingies on the way.

I do not know whether all mobile phones got the same bootloader, yet, Samsung, in their phones, introduced the following (mostly) text based menus:

1. An Android Recovery mode In this mode, you can run some
   • wipes of the user data & Cache directories [Although I did run this, it didn’t make any of the matter better, it just got stuck again as I described]
   • run an OTA (On The Air) update [which didn’t work for me].
   • load an image from external/internal SD Card.
2. A Download mode this mode, was made to load images using ODIN (a loader application that runs both on the mobile, and on the computer it is connected to)

ROM/Firmware:

So Initially there is a way to load a new image. Now I need to learn about the ROM/Firmware images.The android devices are virtually an open based linux system. And a ROM/Firmware is the basic files required to run properly an android OS.

The rom includes stuff like:

• Kernel
• GUI
• Core functions
• etc

Described in details on the following URL.

There are sites that explain what composes a ROM name (things like the date it was built, the CSC – the country code that it is assigned to, and more), yet, no matter what search I made, I didn’t find the proper ROM/Firmware.

There are basically two types of ROM/Firmware:

1. A stock ROM – the ROM as it was released from the mobile manufacture, without any modifications to it.
2. A custom ROM – The name sais it all, a custom made ROM. It can be that the kernel functions got modified or more visually details were modified — as launch Icons, Widgets, etc.

I found a proper Stock ROM of Android Jelly Bean version for my device. The only problem is that it wasn’t the same CSC, which means that I wouldn’t be able to be updated from the Local Samsung Services / or using KIES Firmware Update, with new versions of the Firmware (this is as far as I’ve gathered).