Running Android Jelly Bean (4.1) on a Galaxy S Advance

The Samsung Galaxy S Advance (I9070) is a nice phone.  It's one of the very few Android phones that has a reasonable screen size (just 4 inches--the same as the iPhone 5) but's also fairly powerful with a dual core processor.  The only problem is that it only has 768 MB of RAM, which should be enough for Android JB (Jelly Bean 4.1), but Samsung's build of JB is pretty poor, and performance suffers.

One solution is to keep the phone on (or downgrade it to) Android Gingerbread (2.3), but who wants to run a 2+ year old OS?  So here's how to have your cake (or Jelly Bean, as it were), and eat it too:

1. Back up your phone
   This process is going to wipe everything on your phone, so I'd recommend backing up anything you'd like to keep. I won't go into detail on this, but I generally recommend rooting and using Titanium Backup.


2. Upgrade to Jelly Bean
   The easiest way to do this is through Samsung's own Kies software. If you get a message saying Kies is unable to update the firmware on the device, it can still be done, but will take a little bit of work. I recommend the instructions here: Galaxy S Advance Receives I9070XXLQG Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean Update [Manually Install]


3. Clear the cache
   This is something I like to do to ensure a clean install after an upgrade:
1. Power off the phone
2. Boot the phone into recovery mode by pressing and holding volume up, home, and power buttons together (you can let go once you see the I9070 screen)
3. Select wipe data/factory reset
4. Select wipe cache partition
5. Select reboot system now


4. Root the phone
   This has also been thoroughly documented elsewhere, so I won't reinvent the wheel: How to root Galaxy S Advance on I9070XXLQG Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean [Tutorial]


5. Install Cocore kernel
   This helps mitigate some of the slowness you'll notice when upgrading to Jelly Bean.  This takes a couple of steps, but overall is pretty easy:
1. Download the temporary ClockworkMod (CWM) recovery to the SD card from here: [Recovery] CWM 6.0.2.8 [JB Compatible]
2. Download the latest CWM Cocore kernel from here: CoCore-E-Refresh
3. Reboot into recovery mode using the steps given above
4. Select apply update from external storage, browse to the temporary CWM file, and install it. When it's finished it will automatically load the temporary CWM.
5. From the temporary CWM, select install zip from sdcard, browse to the Cocore kernel, and install it
6. Select reboot system now to reboot


6. Disable/uninstall bloatware
   Another reason Samsung's build is so slow is that it comes with tons of junk, which uses up the majority of the phone's RAM. Getting rid of it is a huge help:
1. From the home screen, go to Menu --> Settings --> Application manager, then swipe right until you get to the All tab
2. Open each of these apps, and click the Disable button, or you can optionally skip this step and go to the next step and use Titanium Backup to completely uninstall these apps:
• ChatON, ChocoEUKor, Clock (digital), Clock (funky), Clock (modern), CoolEUKor, Dual Clock (analogue), Dual Clock (digital), Helv Neue S, Memo, Microbes, Mini Diary, My Files, Polaris Viewer 4.1, RoseEUKor, S Note Provider, S Planner, Samsung account, Samsung Apps, Samsung Backup, Samsung Backup Provider, Samsung Browser SyncAdapter, Samsung Calendar SyncAdapter, Samsung Cloud Data Relay, Samsung Contact SyncAdapter, Samsung Push Service, SNS (with the facebook icon), Weather Widget, Weather Widget Main, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! News
3. If you wish to further disable bloatware, install Titanium Backup, and uninstall the following apps (or you can freeze/disable them using Titanium Backup Pro):
• AllShare Service, com.samsung.app.playreadyui, Memo, Mobile print, Music Player, OmaDrmPopup, SamsungAppsUNA2


7. Install calendar and file manager
   We removed Samsung's crummy calendar and file manager apps, so install Google Calendar and the file manager app of your choice (I like OI File Manager since it's lightweight and open source)

Well, it takes a bit of work, but you should now have a smooth-running Jelly Bean on your Galaxy S Advance.  Enjoy!