My new handset: Samsung Galaxy S4 mini

26.12.2013 by Dirk Olmes

My trusty old Samsung Galaxy S running Cyanogenmod is beginning to show its age. The main shortcoming of the device is it’s RAM - 384 MB is on the low side for running a current Android version.

So I was looking for a modern device that would run Cyanogenmod. A Galaxy S4 would have been my first choice but I definitely don’t like the form factor - it’s a good deal larger than the old Galaxy S. The new device should really be about the same size as the old one. I ended up with a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini which has similar specs to the “big” S4 but is the same size as the old Galaxy S. Oh, and of course Cyanogenmod is supported, too :-)

So I got the device fairly cheap by extending my existing mobile contract. Before I installed CM on the device, I only booted the stock firmware once to obtain IP address, IMEI etc. After that, I did the rooting process as described on the CM device page. Rooting went fairly smooth using the steps described there.

I did a full backup of the old device using Titanium Backup and put the backup folder onto the removable SD card. After the SD card was moved to the S4 mini, I was able to restore almost everything.

So far I’m pretty pleased with the experience: things run a lot smoother than on the old device (surprise, surprise). I have yet to find a good use case for the new gadgets like NFC.

Cyanogenmod on my Samsung Galaxy S

28.12.2012 by Dirk Olmes

I had previously rooted my Samsung Galaxy S to install a newer release of Android 2.3.

While I was pretty satisfied with the device and the Android version it’s running I’m concerned about the lack of security updates. By now it’s clear that Android 2.x …

PPTP VPN

13.08.2011 by Dirk Olmes

I’m a big fan of OpenVPN - I use it to tunnel traffic between my home net and the office. I also have an OpenVPN set with a customer site. Since I recently flushed an Android update and rooted the device at the same time I thought about installing OpenVPN …

Odin on VirtualBox

11.08.2011 by Dirk Olmes

I flashed an Adroid update earlier today. This was done from Windows using Odin and it worked like a charm.

This approach requires me to boot into Windows, though which is quite an interrupt in the daily procedure. So I thought I’d give Odin on Windows running in a …

Kies woes again

10.08.2011 by Dirk Olmes

In my last blog post I talked about my unsuccessful experience with Kies. Since then I bought a cheap hard drive and put it into my work machine and installed Windows on it. Kies installed fine on that windows installation but much to my disappointment I did not get an …

Kies woes

17.03.2011 by Dirk Olmes

Ok so now I have this new Android device. After downloading some apps and playing around with it for a few days I am ready for “the real stuff”, namely rooting, flashing custom images and all the other hacking fun that’s possible with this kind of devices.

The official …

The future is here

12.03.2011 by Dirk Olmes

I was resisting the temptations of modern Smartphones for quite some time now. My first impression was that all these devices are toys and/or giant data leaks.

Then my wife got herself an iPhone and by playing around with it I learned two things:

a smartphone for me will …