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Beginning of the end for us flashers

Hawker

Hawker

Android Expert
Now that the S3 is getting its feet well under the table, will this mean us poor old S2 rabble will be flashing less and less in terms of new firmware?

If you look on SamMobile, there were easily dozens and dozens of firmware releases each and every month for the S2. That is, right up to this month. Is it just a coincidence that during the whole of June, there have only been 3 firmware releases for the S2, and one of these was an O2 carrier branded release of older firmware?

I'm beginning to feel left out. :(

I would be very interested to hear what happened to those of you who were on a Galaxy S soon after the S2 was released.
 
Was wandering same thing myself!
Havent really had much new stuff to flash last few weeks & couldnt help but wander if developers were 'moving on'??

Hopefully not.
 
ROMs, Kernels, and Firmware tweakers will eventually move on in the end as they upgrade their devices following the market and development... The app development department sure wont drop for certain and will be around for a very long time... unless android OS itself gets discontinued abruptly, like... Symbian.
 
I prefer to think of this as not, "The Beginning of the End", but rather, "The End of the Beginning".

By that, I mean that we have got over the getting to know the SGSII, phase. We hardened flashers now know the in's and out's of the phone. We know its capabilities... and its limitations. We have gone through all the trials and tribulations of Gingerbread. The testing of custom ROM's. The selection of modems. The configuration of kernels.

Now we have moved on to ICS and, thanks to Gingerbread and the last year of experience, the transition has been easier.

Sure, there are dev's who will be moving on to the latest and greatest on the market. However, let us not forget that there are many millions of SGSII's out there and, when all said and done, the SGSII and the SGSIII are not a million miles apart.

Already we have seen ports of app's, wallpapers, fonts and even parts of firmware come our way from the SGSIII.

I took my foot off of the gas towards the end of Gingerbread and, for about 5 months, I stuck with CheckROM RevolutionHD and just changed my modem and kernel.

I see no reason why I might not find another custom ROM like that, maybe CheckROM v7... maybe NEAT. Who knows? That should take me up to Christmas and no doubt the successor to the SGSIII will be announced with even more goodies and, in the case of the UK, it will be LTE enabled.

Sure, there may be some dev's that we've come to know and trust, moving on but nature abhors a vacuum and I fully expect others to take their place.

As for the slow down in official, stock, ICS releases... that's to be expected. The first release was LPQ which, IMHO, was a real dogs breakfast! I refused point blank to go over to ICS until LP7 showed up... which was bearable. Since then Samsung have been working on the ICS firmware to get it into some sort of shape. With the release of LPW/LPD/LPG they've now gone a very long way to doing that. My feeling is that, by-and-large, we will not see any major improvements or releases for the SGSII now. After all said and done... Samsung are in the business of selling new handsets and the ICS release for the SGSII was a good will gesture to the millions of users. I really can't see them investing any more time, effort or money into the SGSII. Any improvements and tweaks will now come from the dev's... as was the case after Gingerbread, Android 2.3.6, and not from Samsung.

As far as I'm concerned... there's still life left in the old girl yet!
 
Ill be here till the end. And ill probably see you all in the SGS4 forums next rather than the third.
 
Personal opinion, I think this is too early to make judgements on the software lifespan of the S2.

Back in the early use of S2, enthusiast owners and flashers pushed ROM developers, cooks, tweakers and app developers to produce content and firmware modules which improved the phone to what it is now.

Looking at that perspective, I don't see any difference with the release of S3... there are definitely new owners of S3 which will push those very same people to make their S3s "fly"... and I'm sure some developers are not done yet with the S2s they have lying around... I'm sure some developers will not allow their S2s to be a mere piece of expensive novelty.

Adding the fact that S2's prices have slightly dropped thanks to the release of S3, there will still be demand for a phone thats powerful enough and doesn't singe a deep hole in one's wallet; so there's no shortage on new owners in the future for quite a while - that's for sure.
 
I use resurrection remix rom and have also used andy x roms and updates for both are stil very regular, if they come to an end i think i can live with it. I think there will come a time when not much more can be updated or improved anyway.

I just hope that is a new android version comes out (jelly bean) that the devs can make it work for the s2
 
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