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This guide applies to the Galaxy’s that Samsung so annoyingly decided to disable the 3 button recovery mode. If you have bricked your device but have managed to use the 3 button recovery before, this youtube video might help you. Otherwise, keep reading.

So the other day I decided I would flash my device instead of waiting for the official Android 2.2 release for Africa. Even though its already released in other countries, we obviously have to wait for Vodacom to put their branding crap all over it. This should have been a fairly simple procedure but half way through upgrading using Odin, everything just froze. I left it for a while then eventually unplugged it. When I tried to turn the phone back on all I got was the Phone-!-PC screen or Black screen of death.

If you watched the youtube video above you’ll see this normally shouldn’t be much of a problem, but as my phone falls into the no-3-button mode I was pretty screwed. After stressing out for a few minutes I headed over to the XDA forums and found this very, very useful post. It explains what to do in my situation and while it requires a bit of work, its worth it in the end. I highly recommend you go read it.

The post describes how to build a test jig which will force your phone into download mode. It also mentions places where you can buy the components needed, but obvisouly it’s not ideal for anyone from SA because you’re probably looking at at least a months delivery time. So this is what I did:

MicroUSB Plug

1. A microUSB plug
I came very close to cutting up my wall charger to get to the plug, but instead headed down the the Muizenburg craft market (the one every sunday). From there you can pick up a generic charger for virtually nothing (R25 – R30). It doesn’t matter what phone it’s for as long as it has a microUSB plug. I bought a wall charger & a car charger but the car charger didn’t have the 4th pin so I’d recommend a wall charger. Whats nice about these ones is that the microUSB plug is housed in a plastic casing that easily pops open. It’s much easier than having to slice away at the rubber ones.

300k Resistor, 1k Resistor, MicroUSB Plug

2. Resistors (combined resistance of 301K)
I struggled to find these at first. The electronics shop closest to my house didn’t have them and all the bigger stores are way too far away and would require taking time away from my weekend. I decided to order off Rabtron because they had everything I needed. As the resistors are only like 16c, I ended up buying 10 x 100k resistors, 10 x 1k resistors and 10 x 300k resistors, just to full up the order a bit. The total was still only R4.60 which made paying R30 for delivery a bit painful.

I ended up going with 1 x 300k & 1 x 1k resistor. I soldered them together then soldered the ends to pin 4 & 5. I plugged it in and after about 3 seconds it kicked it into download mode. From there you can flash any firmware you want.

So I’ve had the Galaxy S for a while now so I thought I’d share my current setup and what I have installed.

I’m still running Android 2.1. The official Samsung release of 2.2 (for africa) is supposed to be here before the end of the year so i’m holding out for that before I start playing around with other 2.2 ROMs.

I have however rooted the phone in order to install certain apps. If you’re not sure what that is, rooting your phone basically gives you greater access to all areas of the OS that you don’t have by default. For a full explanation on rooting your device, read this blog post. Note this does void your warranty, but you can easily unroot your phone.

These are just few of the apps I have installed that generally improve the overall performance/experience of the device:

One Click Lag Fix (requires rooting)
- In a nutshell, this app will speed up your phone. Although it is a lot more complicated.

Market Enabler (requires rooting)
I live in South Africa which is one of countries that don’t yet have access to paid apps on the Android Market. This handy little app will fake your country allowing you to see and purchase paid apps. It’s not permanent and goes back to normal after a reset. It’s available to download via the Android Market.

Samsung Home Screen Changer (requires rooting)
- This will change the default home screen to whatever you select. By default its always the first home screen.

Rom Manager Free Version (requires rooting, available in the Market)
- This tool allows you to manage your roms. Backup, Restore and do OTA updates. I just use it to keep backups of my stock samsung rom.

TypoClock
- This is a very nice clock widget. Way better than any Samsung or Androd clock widget.

ConnectBot
- SSH client. Handy for when you are no where near a pc.

Beautiful Widgets (paid – about $2.05)
- Beautiful Widgets comes with some very nice clock & weather widgets. Its very customizable and there are plenty of  user-submitted skins to be downloaded for the clocks & widgets.

Zedge
– While I would normally avoid any website that even mentioned the words “Free ringtones & wallpapers” like the plague, Zedge is not like those. It has thousands of user submitted wallpapers and ringtones. If you register on their site for an account (optional), you can mark your favourites which allows you to easily get the items back if you lose them for whatever reason.

Angry Birds
- No list of apps would be complete with out this game. No explanation needed, just go download it and clear your schedule the next 3 or 4 hours.

I take no responsibility if you break your phone

I’ve been wanting an Android device for sometime now because I want to start writing apps (or atleast start learning to write apps). I finally settled on the Galaxy S, but the HTC Desire came very close.

Theres just no comparison to my Samsung Omnia i900 and I’m glad to be rid of Windows Mobile 6.1.

The Galaxy is running Samsungs TouchWiz 3.0 and I had read a lot of bad reviews about it while researching the phone, but so far I’ve had no issues with it. Although I suppose anything is better than WinMo 6.1.

There are a few small issues with the phone but overall I’m really happy with it. The main issue I had was USSD messages (for checking your balance etc) were not working. I read somewhere that it’s Samsungs Mobile Tracker that breaks it. Mobile Tracker is for locating your lost/stolen phone among other things. Disabling this feature fixed the problem. This has apprently been fixed in the 2.2 firmware.