4.1 on the Galaxy S3

So, I like to keep tabs on a lot of things, it's a habit of my personality.  One of the ways I handle this is to make databases.



I have several... one of which is the "Jelly Bound" update database.  We had seen that Samsung Canada was going to release the Jellies for the Galaxy S3 around late November, then was moved back to December 3.  So I sat around at my computer late on the 2nd and thought "technically it IS December 3rd in some parts of Canada... I wonder if it's out yet".  So I went to hit the button.

This is what I saw:

Well, it means it's available, but just not ready for 'me' via the OTA method.  I guess there's a bit of a queue. As I saw my Google+ stream fill up with "It's READY", I figured there were a few folk ahead of me.

The typical trick would be to clear the Services Framework cache and then *#*#checkin#*#* to force an update.  But the S3 has that feature disabled... so I had to go with Kies if I didn't want to wait.

But wait I had to, as I hadn't put the Kies software on, then I got the notice to update... but my phone was under 50% so it wouldn't let me update, so all the time to set up, download the update, prepare the firmware goes to waste.  Makes sense, but such an arbitrary number (actually I didn't know it was 50%, it just said to charge), and let me tell you, charging your phone is VERY slow, especially when it's tied to something you want to get.

After the phone hit over 50% I tried again (I tried at 30, 35, 40, 45...) and it did it's "magic" and lo' and behold I have my jellies on my phone.

So what's it like?  Well... not much difference.  Touchwiz takes care of the fact that you can't really see much difference in the underlying system.  Granted, 4.0 -> 4.1 wasn't much of a visual change either, but still...

Biggest advantages:


  • Project Butter... definitely smoother.  Not a lot, but an improvement [benchmark difference]
  • Google Now:  it's funny to think how much I really REALLY enjoyed Now before, until you go without it.  I wish there was the gesture to bring it up; but I can live with just holding the Menu button (you can also hold the home button then hit the "G", but that's too many steps for me)
  • Expanded notifications - now I only really had 4.1 before, and 4.1.1 is slightly different as it doesn't work quite how I remembered it.  And I thought there was supposed to be a 'tap-drag' to expand, rather than the pinch?  Ah well.  Glad to have it.
With the lack of a Nexus 4 in the foreseeable future, I'm debating whether to just keep the phone (and root it to rid myself of any TouchWiz) or pick up the Optimus G, now that it's got a bootloader unlock tool.

Did you get the 4.1 update for your S3?


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