Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, following its bigger version made an entry in 2011 right after a few months of the Galaxy S3 thus setting a trend of mini versions of the flagships by Samsung. The Galaxy S3 Mini sports a 4.0 inch Super AMOLED screen with 233 ppi, 1GB RAM, 1Ghz Dual Core CPU, 8/16 GB internal storage with an SD card slot, a 5MP camera at the back while having a VGA camera at the front. The device initially ran on Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean out of the box.
Being smaller in size, affordable and having a lot of features, the device was very well received by the users and became much popular within a short span of time. Samsung rolled out the Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 update after some time of the device’s release that fixed a lot of bugs and improved the performance. In this post, we will be having a look on how we can update Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini to Android 4.1.2 if your’s is running on Android 4.1.1. Let’s have a look on the guide….
There are several methods for updating your device to Android 4.1.2, before we head to the manual method we recommend you to try it using the following two ways.
Method 1: via OTA Updates:
Try updating via OTA updates, to do so tap Settings>About Device > Software Update > Check for Updates
If the update is available via OTA in your region, you may be able to update your device using Wi-Fi.
2nd method: via Samsung Kies:
Samsung Kies is Samsung’s official pc suite software for its devices. You may install it, connect your device to your PC and check for updates via Samsung Kies.
The above two methods are the easiest ones to update your device to the latest firmware, but as the updates take a quite a long time to reach different regions, you may not be able to update your device immediately. To overcome this hurdle, we’ll be learning a manual method to update Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini to Android 4.1.2.
Before we begin, please keep in mind that this is a custom method, and this will raise your device’s flash/binary counter from 0 to 1. This will result in voiding your warranty, so please make sure that you are doing it at your own risk, we may not be held responsible in case of any mishap.
Pre Requisites:
- Make sure that your phone’s battery is charged at least over 60%.
- Use the original data cable for establishing the connection between your PC and phone.
- Turn off / disable Samsung Kies while using Odin.
- Turn of any Anti Virus softwares while using Odin.
- Backup all your important data on internal storage, also backup your important Contacts, Call Logs & Messages. This is important as you will have to wipe your factory data after flashing this firmware. It is not necessary but it is highly recommended to achieve the best performance results.
- Please keep in mind that if you have rooted your phone or have installed a custom recovery, then as soon as you flash the latest Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean stock firmware, you will loose the root access and custom recovery as well.
Things you need to download:
- Download Odin PC and extract it. – Get it Here
- Download and install Samsung USB Drivers – Get Here
- Download latest Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 I8190XXAMG4 Firmware – Get it HERE.
Firmware Link Updated!
Installing Android 4.1.2 XXAMG4 Jelly Bean Official Firmware on Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini:
- Open Odin.
- Extract the downloaded firmware file once.
- Put your phone in download mode. To do so, Turn it off, Turn it on now by pressing and holding Volume Down + Home Button + Power Key simultaneously, you should see a warning now, press Volume Up to continue. You should be in download mode now.
- Connect your phone to your PC. As soon as it gets connected, the ID:COM box should turn blue.
- Now in Odin:
- Hit PDA tab and give it the file having your firmware, that should be and MD5 file and in .tar.md5 format.
- Hit Phone tab and give it the file for Phone. (Only if you get this file, otherwise ignore it)
- Hit CSC tab and give it the file for CSC. (Only if you get this file, otherwise ignore it)
- Hit Bootloader tab and give it the file for Bootloader. (Only if you get this file, otherwise ignore it)
- Wait for a while till Odin sets it up. Once the logs appear, hit Start.
- It should take a few minutes while Odin finishes installing the latest Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean on your Galaxy S3 Mini.
- As soon as installation process ends, your device should restart.
- Phewww! Congrats! You’ve successfully install the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean latest stock firmware on your Galaxy S3 Mini.
Although the firmware has been installed and will most likely work well. But it is highly recommended that you must wipe your phone’s data and wipe cache partition from recovery after installing the new firmware. This results in the best performance and stability of your device, also in case you face the bootloop after installing the latest firmware then the above lines will help you to fix it.
That’s all. In case you got any difficulties or got any queries, feel free to leave us a comment. We will try our best to help you out. Thanks.
