My Adventures with a Samsung Galaxy S i9000b: CyanogenMod 7.1

Thanks to Olavo, I’ve found out that the guys from BrasilDroid managed to get a port of CyanogenMod working on the i9000b version of the Samsung Galaxy S, which is one of the best Android roms available out there. Supporting stuff like native theming, FLAC, OpenVPN, performance tweaks and a bunch of other things. More details can be found at it’s wikipedia entry.

So, after doing some research I was able to get it working, not without a small scare of course (got the phone bricked but managed to unbrick). My phone was still running the stock Gingerbread rom that which I installed some months ago.

According to the installation procedure from BrasilDroid, I had all the requirements in place, except having a kernel with ClockWorkMod (you used to need to be running a Froyo rom, but that’s no longer the case). Managed to find a Gingerbread kernel (Gingerbread BrD’s #2) on BrasilDroid’s Samsung Galaxy S kernel list. Followed the same procedure from my previous post to install the new kernel and here’s where I hit a bump on the road, the installation attempt failed and the phone got bricked, but  I was still able to get into download mode (whew). I think some of the USB drivers were missing, so I re-installed Samsung Kies (disabled it afterwards) and repeated the procedure, all worked like a breeze and now I had a kernel with ClockWorkMod.

With all the requirements taking care of, it was just a matter of following downloading the rom, the google apps, placing them on the root of the internal SD card and following the official procedure (slightly adapted below):

1. Turning off the phone
2. Boot into the ClockworkMod Recovery. (Volume UP and the Menu keys, followed by the Power key)
3. Once the device boots into the ClockworkMod Recovery, use the side volume keys to move around, and either the power or the menu keys to  select.
4. Select the option to Wipe data/factory reset.
5. Then select the option to Wipe cache partition.
6. Select Install zip from sdcard.
7. Select Choose zip from sdcard.
8. Select the update-cm-7.1.0-RC1-GalaxyS_B-KANG-signed.zip file (wait for it to finish).
9. Repeat the procedure with the gapps-gb-20110503-signed.zip file (wait for it to finish)
10. Select +++++Go Back+++++ to get back to the main menu, and select the Reboot system now option. The Samsung Galaxy S should now boot into CyanogenMod.

So far it is looking pretty sweet.

Material:

• Gingerbread BrD’s #2 kernel: kernel-odin.v2.tar
• CyanogemMod 7.1.0 RC1 for Galaxy S i9000b: update-cm-7.1.0-RC1-GalaxyS_B-KANG-signed.zip
• Google Apps: gapps-gb-20110503-signed.zip
• Odin: Odin3 v1.3 com 803.pit.rar (Unfortunately Odin is Windows only, there’s Heimdall which works on Linux and OSX but at this time I still didn’t had the time to give it a try)

Credits

• BrasilDroid team
• CyanogenMod team
• Samsung Galaxy S – OFICIAL community on Orkut
• André Ferrandis on Orkut for the Rooting tutorial

References:

• BrasilDroid’s CyanogenMod 7.1 Gingerbread 2.3.5 GT-I9000B Tutorial
• BrasilDroid’s Galaxy S I9000B kernel list
• CyanogenMod’s Samsung Galaxy S: Full Update Guide
• Orkut Article: [DICA] Root no Gigerbread 2.3.3 ou 2.3.4

Disclaimer:

These tutorials might brick your phone, making it unusable so be careful. Neither me nor the original authors are to be held responsible for what you do with your phone. Be warned that the processes described in some of them might also void your warranty.