Looking at my mobile phone usage I can tell that I use the phone primarily for making calls and sending the occasional SMS. I do not use Internet, apps or other fancy stuff that smartphones ship with these days. If I had the choice, I’d buy a phone that comes without camera and all the gimmicks that I do not need.
I received the Samsung GT-S8500 when I renewed my contract with T-Mobile. That was about a year ago and I never bothered to connect the phone to the Internet or see if Samsung has released a newer firmware for the device.
That changed today when I decided to find out how to update the phone’s firmware. And since I’m probably not the only one who cannot figure it out in a matter of seconds, I have decided to write a tutorial on how its done.
You need the following equipment to check for and install updates: The Samsung Android phone, the USB cable to connect the phone to the computer, and the Samsung Kies software [Download here] which handles the updating and other things.
Install Samsung Kies first. This may take a while. The program installs mobile phone drivers and may restart your computer without warning. Next thing that you need to do is to close all open applications on your phone. This is done by holding down the center button on the phone’s front until a new screen pops up with an option to close all running applications.
Use the USB cable to connect your mobile device to the computer and select Samsung Kies as the USB connection method. Start the software, the mobile phone should be recognized immediately.
Samsung Kies will search for updates automatically if the computer it is running on is connected to the Internet.
I’d advise anyone to stop the process at that time to export the phone’s settings and data to the PC first. Firmware updates may alter or remove data on the phone and it is always a good idea to make sure you can restore your data if that is the case.
Click Import/Export in Kies, switch to Export and use the Export buttons to backup the phone’s data to your computer. You can backup contacts, photos, music, videos, schedule, or to-dos.
Go back to the basic information tab in the Samsung Kies software after you have backed up your phone’s data. Click on the Firmware Update button to start the upgrade.
An informational page is displayed next. Samsung offers tips on how to make sure that the firmware update will complete without errors. The company suggests to connect the phone to a power supply, to back up data before the process, to not use the phone during the upgrade and to not connect other devices to the computer in that time.
The process may take up to 30 minutes, but is usually faster. My phone’s firmware upgrade took about five minutes.
If everything went fine you will receive a success message in the end. The device needs to be restarted (happened automatically in my case). You should now check if the data that you have stored on your phone is still available. If it is not, use the import feature of the Samsung Kies software to upload the data again to your phone.
Have you ever updated your smartphone? If so, how would you describe the process?
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