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| Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (Photo credit: phossil) |
2 weeks ago, my wife got her Samsung Galaxy Note II LTE (GT-N7105) for her plan re-contract with Starhub. I would have to mention (again) that we got the Samsung Note 2 7.0 (GT-P3100) weeks before, from the yearly early re-contract privilege only available with SingTel service provider. I mean, Starhub used to offer the same perk, but this was taken out about 2 years ago. Business decision, I suppose.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is this: now that my wife has her new phone, then I am already free to “take” the Tab for my own use. This action will leave 2 phones without lines: the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Galaxy R (GT-I9103). This would mean that our 3-year old girl would have, at any point in time, 3 phones to play with while at home, juggling between the 3 devices, until the batteries die out. She would then turn to her inanimate play things in her toy box…
2 weeks ago, it was Wednesday, and I made the decision, so I switched the SIM cards. I brought with me the Tab, but I grew restless. I knew I can do more with it. The trigger was pulled, and bang! I was searching for the ‘latest’ ROM, kernel, updates, etc. This is me, what I set my mind to do, it consumes me!
And with the internet littered with tons of pages of (sometimes useless) information, I found what I am looking for – the Jelly Bean 4.2 kernel for my new GT-P3100. Having had rooted and flashed ROMs on my Galaxy R phone, I thought to myself, “This should be a piece of cake.”
Then the dilemma came.
I started flashing the new kernel while at work, and it failed. Several times I tried, and still failed. And all the time, I would have to reset the phone to the root and kernel that works. I have a saving patch, I could say. It is well worth mentioning: the filename is “P3100XXCLL2_P3100XEFCLK1_P3100XXCLJ3_HOME.tar.md5”. And this has a very faithful partner, the rooting file: “CF-Auto-Root-espressorf-espressorfxx-gtp3100.tar.md5”. Of course, all the time, I am using Odin3-v1.85. So when the flashing fails, I resort to flashing with the ‘working’ ROM, then to rooting the phone.
And the whole day of Wednesday, I was flashing, until I got home, and even late at night, till midnight, I was flashing. Still fails. The time I came home from office, my girl did as she would always do before: ask for my phone, so she can play with it. Well, I had to admit my failure, so I quietly told her, “It’s not working.” And showing her the black, blank screen, she took my word for it and went on her way.
Thursday came, I since I didn’t have a working phone, I told my wife that I’d ‘borrow’ the old Galaxy R phone while I am ‘fixing’ the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 unit. I got 2 units with me when I went to work.
Having had no luck the day before, I decided to try something else, and since it is something that I really wanted to try out, I searched for ROM kernels that will offer over-clocking and under-clocking – of course, with Jelly Bean 4.2 as the base item. I could say I’m becoming overly-zealous, am I? Sure enough, I found some, till I settled with one that makes a high-pitched offer, which I took, like a fish swallowing the hook, line and sinker. I was getting too ambitious, I suppose.
And even this one failed. The whole day of Thursday, I repeatedly tried, of course, each time, my saving pair of working kernel and rooter would help me get back to my feet each time my Android phone falls. I ended the day with all attempts ending in failure.
Friday, learning from the past 2 days, I searched, and only then I realized, that the Wednesday flashing was using an ‘incompatible’ file – and not that I am blind to it. Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 were of 2 kinds, basically: one is GT-p3100 (3G + WiFi), and the other, GT-P3110 (WiFi only). And there is one more: GT-P3113. What I was using was one specifically meant for the GT-P3110, while my unit is the GT-P3100. Of course, I went with this because some guy in the forum said that “it should be okay,” reading from some other user’s query of using that particular file for flashing.
As for the over-clocked module, it was already highlighted in the XDA pages that it was not verified, and you would do it with caution; a caveat. Of course I failed, and I learned from it.
It was already about lunchtime when I found one file that may be the answer. And it is complicated by the fact that I have to download it, and then later on, to try and flash my device.
The download finished about half past 4pm, and that left me with no more time to try anything, so I just run my saving pair, flashing my device with the working kernel, and then I got it rooted. All that’s needed is to try the newly-downloaded kernel.
When I arrived home, I restrained myself by going through the usual things when coming home. So after simmering down, I set up my laptop, booted it up, and then let it idle for a short while. I took the USB cable, held the device and pressed Volume Up and Power buttons simultaneously, I activated CWM Recovery, then selected install from zip file.
Did that installation work? You bet!
One shot. That’s all that was needed to install the new ROM, and to my pleasant surprise, the Android version is 4.2.2 – the latest!
And to attribute to the developers all the praise due them, I found it from the XDA forums. The file name is “cm-10.1-20130308-NIGHTLY-p3100.zip”, with the other file, “gapps-jb-20121212-signed.zip”, both installing without fail.
So now my Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 GT-P3100 unit is fully functional with Jelly Bean 4.2.2 installed.
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The other phone, the GT-N7105, since there wasn’t any issue I encountered when I rooted, I’ll just mention the rooting file I used is this, “CF-Auto-Root-SGN2.zip”.
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Caution: the zip files, while they all would be tagged as WinRAR archive files, are different – some aren’t simply compressed files. But you should know that already, don't you?
Till then!
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