Galaxy S2: Jelly Bean 4.1.2 XWLS8

Last weekend I updated my phone's firmware to Jelly Bean XWLS8 following the instructions in xda forum. It is better than the original 4.0.3 firmware because

• there are more toggles in notification panel, the data connection one is what I like most;
• you can also adjust brightness in notification area;
• the graphical effects looks better;
• you can see the notification panel from the screenlock (well, maybe not everybody likes this one);
• you can alphabetically sort apps in grid view.

What I do not like:

• I can no longer adjust brightness by holding the notification panel and moving left and right;
• I can no longer disable some bloatware using native apps manager;
• the battery time is still bad compared to my old Samsung i8910 :-(
• When setting wallpapers Jelly Bean only use the center part of the .png/.jpg image. If your wallpaper is larger in the vertical axe (like mine) Jelly Bean will crop the upper and lower parts :-/

Yesterday I had one problem with phone rebooting after I had left it turned off charging all night. It worked for one minute, then freezed and rebooted a couple of minutes later. It did not tree times until I hooked up the USB cable to try to run logcat and see what was happening. By my suprise it stopped reboot and I could use the phone normally. I looked in the logcat I saw that Youtube app was crashing with the message

E/AndroidRuntime( 7635): java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to create application com.google.android.youtube.app.YouTubeApplication: java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not bind to Intent { cmp=com.google.android.youtube/.core.transfer.DownloadService }

The Youtube app was already showing a dialog before I turned the phone off, I tried to make it work with no avail. I also searched on the Internet if anybody had the some problem and have not found any explanation for that. After some minutes tring to make Youtube work I gave up and went to do something else. Some minutes later I tried Youtube again and guess what? It worked :-) and is still working. I really do not know what happened.

Plasma NM 0.9.0.7

Plasma NM 0.9.0.7

SHA256Sum: 926e9bbbc848219ea6314cc84325216397732c8ad1b94ba41b5c9e53b54773b2

Because of bug 313291 I really recommend upgrading to this new version.

Changelog:

. fix version string (it is wrong in Plasma NM 0.9.0.6).
311837: fix Metric edit box in VPN's routes window.
304466: add workaround to prevent crash when disabling wireless also disconnects the wifi card from motherboard.
313291: fix Ok button when adding/editing connections.
312305: add support to IPv6 Privacy Extension.
312656: quote file names when exporting openvpn configuration file in case they contain white spaces in their names.
. improve vpn import/export error handling.
311032: ignore "ghost" connections.
311348: workaround visual glitch in Back button in interface details window.
311894: fix disabling IPv4 configuration (usefull if you only use IPv6).

The following languages have more than 80% of strings translated:

bs ca cs da de el es et fi fr gl hu it kk km lt nb nds nl pl pt pt_BR ru sk sl sr sr@ijekavian sr@ijekavianlatin sr@latin sv uk zh_CN zh_TW

Also read some usefull information about Plasma NM in my past posts.

New (old) toy 2: Samsung Galaxy i9100 (aka Galaxy SII)

Well, my old phone was in really back shape after more than three years so I decided to buy a new one.

I really do not like that big smartphones that are becoming common these days :-( I already own a tablet, so why buy an almost-tablet-sized smartphone? I searched for some months for smartphones with good features, like Galaxy SIII, HTC One S/X, Motorola RarZ (Maxx HD), etc. In all benchmarks I have read Galaxxy SIII would be the best choice, but I really do not like its size and the cracked screen problems made uneasy to buy one of them. I really try hard to preserve my phones (I still own all phone I have used so far, including an ancient Nokia 3320 from more than 10 years ago).

After consider all posibilities, size of the phone, battery size and price I decided to buy a Samsung Galaxy SII. It's is old phone, but still capable of running new Android versions and is has proven to be a very good phone. The best part is that it also cheap compared to SIII and one of the web sites I usually buy things from made a clearance sale and I could buy for a reasonable price and buying conditions :-D. The only thing I would really miss from Galaxy SIII is the bigger battery, but I can live with that and I already installed and configured some software that helps me increase the battery time.

Update: I have noticed that ICS is really really bad at connecting to my operator's 3G network. That is a known bug and there is no simple solution for it unfortunately :-( From time to time my 3G connection just disconnects and never comes back until I reboot the phone. Even when connected the performance is really poor compared to my old Samsung i8910.