I’ve hesitated to buy a smart phone. When I finally did it in September 2011, I chose a Samsung Galaxy S2. It was cheaper than the iPhone, had a great screen and I knew that one day, when Samsung would inevitably stop providing updates, I could always root it and install CyanogenMod. Well, Samsung stopped providing updates with Android 4.1.2 (ages ago), and as far as I remember I only got three or four updates at all, all of them a long time after their release by Google.
Unfortunately the last version released by Samsung has a severe bug. Sometimes you simply can’t install new apps or (worse) updates to existing ones. The software would be downloaded completely, but the installation would fail with “Insufficient Storage Available” - which of course is complete nonsense.
Searching on the web did not help, nobody seems to know the root cause. It’s just a bug that 4.1.2 has and that was fixed in a later version.
For some time I thought I had found a way. Someone had posted instructions (specific to the Galaxy S2) to
- Open the Phone app and switch to Keypad.
- Dial *#9900#
- On the screen that appears, click on the button labelled "Delete dumpstate/logcat"
It did help, but only for a while. A few days ago I finally decided to get rid of Samsung’s antique software and try switching to the community-supported CyanogenMod. Well, what can I say? I worked. I did not brick my phone, I have the latest stable build from December 2013 installed, it’s Android 4.3.1, and I’m a happy puppy again 🙂
The Song of the Day is “Kik It” by Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Definitely not my music, but not a bad match for the image. Hear it on YouTube.