Root and Flash Samsung Galaxy S2 From Within OSX

This post outlines the steps I’d taken to root and flash my Galaxy S2 (GT-i9100T) with a custom rom.

I was running the latest SGS2 firmware from Vodafone,AU - DVLS3. I decided to obtain a backup of the modem’s firmware found here. I extracted modem.bin to ~/Desktop

Rooting my GT-i9100T phone was a piece of cake thanks to Framaroot. Essentially, it is a one-click application to install Superuser and su binary on phone.

You can manually download the .apk file to your phone’s storage for installation from within any file manager. It is compatible with many phones, and in particular, Exynos devices (eg Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-i9100T) work with the Aragorn exploit. At the time of this writing, I used version 1.6.0 of Framaroot successfully. Read the FAQ on the linked page for further information.

Optional: Next, I installed BusyBox and DroidWall from within the PlayStore.

Next, I downloaded codeworkx’s ClockworkMod Recovery found here. I extracted its contents (zImage) to my Desktop.

Next, I downloaded my preferred custom rom (Omega Jelly Bean) to the phone’s storage at /sdcard.

Next, I visited this page and downloaded heimdall-suite-1.3.2-mac.dmg — **Heimdall Suite 1.3.2** - OS X binaries (universal). At the time of this writing, version 1.4.0 only works with OSX 10.8+ (Mountain Lion) in 64bit mode - 1.3.2 works fine with other OSX versions, though. After installation of the package, I had to reboot the machine.

Finally, I followed the instructions found here to install CWM-recovery. Essentially I had to do the following:

  • Boot the Galaxy S II into download mode by holding down Volume Down, Home & Power.
  • Insert the USB cable into the device.
  • Run heimdall flash --kernel ~/Desktop/zImage --no-reboot from Terminal.app
  • Also, run heimdall flash --modem ~/modem.bin --no-reboot
  • Turn off the phone.
  • Boot the phone into ClockworkMod Recovery mode by holding Volume Up, Home, & Power.

I then proceeded with the rest of the guide to flash the custom rom.

The end result is shown below:
![IMG_20130823_145923](/images/3a7ddf8c74c8b3b19928bcdc044b544aeb08d381.jpg?w=112)