Samsung Galaxy S2 Gets An OTA Update

We’re not sure when exactly Samsung started rolling out this new update via OTA. It came as a surprise to me as I was struggling to update my Galaxy S2. As a Mac user running Lion, it was very difficult to get the Kies working on it as Samsung has not released an update to support Lion. However, a trick I found on this website got the Kies up and running on Lion. Unfortunately, it still had issues and did not support firmware upgrade of Galaxy S2 from it.

So I started trying to install the update using Kies 2.0 running on a windows machine. Eventhough the app successfully notified me of the update, each time I hit update it just failed to download at the same time disconnecting the USB connection. Some of the users on the forums suggested removing memory card and trying was a good idea and it worked for a few of them. So I went ahead and removed microSD card and tried. The update after several tries started to download with a new Firmware download window. But then again it failed.

Finally, I simply fired up the OTA menu and checked for updates even though I was sure there wouldn’t be any update. Well, I was wrong. I saw the following screen.

A lot was not said about the update. All I knew was that an update package was waiting for download. It’s a bit weird as the update does not say if its a major update or not. No version number or size of the update. How can a user choose to download the update without knowing the size especially when he is on a data connection ?? Anyway, I started downloading the update without knowing how big it was. It didn’t show the size while downloading either. I’m guessing it was about 15-20MB from the time taken to download.

The download went smooth and the phone restarted to apply the update.

Installation was also smooth except for one moment when it looked like it almost froze. But it was nothing serious. Finally the phone rebooted and the update was installed successfully message was displayed.

We’re not sure what exactly is included in the update. But as usual bug fixes and battery improvement is expected. We will update this post if we come across any big changes. Alternatively you may let us know if you find any changes by commenting to this post. Here’s the information about the update below:

Android Version: 2.3.3

Baseband Version: I9100XXKE7

Kernel Version: 2.6.35.7-I9100XWKF3-CL276555 root@DELL101 #2

Build Number: GINGERBREAD.XWKF3