Okay boys and girls, to those who dare cross the forbidden line, here is a guide on knowing your Galaxy and how to root your Samsung Galaxy.

First of all READ THIS FAQ.
Taken from Hardware.forum.sg, Samdroid, Modaco, and XDA.

First up is to follow some very important forums to get to know your phone better :

1)XDA Developer Forum Great site for custom roms and general know how.
2)Modaco Forum Modaco is going to post his MCR for Galaxy and there is quite a userbase there.
3)Hardware.sg Forum Our neighbours across the strait have a fair bit of userbase and a lot of information to give out.

Remember to root your device having Android SDK is important so i suggest you guys to download it here.

Once you have the adk install you can access it by :
1)Opening command prompt
2)Open where the SDK is installed
3)Going to tools and ADB-ing

Make sure USB debugging is checked in the phone, and when you first connect it to your computer the drivers for Galaxy is different then the one in the SDK
Here are the drivers :
Windows
-64 bit
-32 bit

Or alternatively you can get the drives by installing Samsung Kies or Samsung New PC software from Samsung website.

Now on to the important parts.




Ours mainly as of this date, come in 1900DXJF4 firmwares. Some people said that the Euro latest firmware is the best, at first i didn't know but after trying one firmware after another i have to agree that each firmware comes with better support and less buggy. There are also new features on the latest firmware such as task manager in the JM2 firmware.

SG users also claim that it has better battery life and they also chose that firmware to get rid of their telcos signature crapware or boot up animation. The option is up to you, read more and choose wisely.

This is the gist of how to mainly update your firmware. Taken from DDEM from Modaco.



Though the default language when booting it up isn't english but easy enough to change if you can remember where the language settings are.
Try to change the settings before opening other programs.
Alternatively you can opt to not flash the CSC file in Odin but success is variable.
Just to complete the guide:

1)Press menu in the home screen
2)Go to settings (bottem right-hand item)
4)5th menu from the bottom (picture of a "A" button)
5)Select the first option in the list and select English


Version from *#1234# says:
PDA: I9000XWJFB
PHONE: I9000XXJF5
CSC: I9000SERJF3
Remember putting other firmwares may break your warranty and brick your devices

But naTTan what if i want root with my current firmware?

Well the guys at samdroid have made it easier to to root your device by just flashing an update.zip.
And here is how you do it :



Taken from Samdroid by Leshak.

Flashing New Roms

As of now we don't have any custom recovery page, so we have to do with the default one. I have requested Amon-Ra to do one for us, but he says he will try but no promises.

The default one only accept roms in the form and name of "update.zip"

1)Take any rom you want to flash, make sure it's in the update.zip name and format.
2)Put it in the root of you sdcard (To samsung Galaxy this means the internal memory.)
3)Go into ADB and type the command

Code :


4)Use the volume button to move up and down, sometimes it's safer to wipe you data and cache partition before updating.
5)Once flash is complete reboot and restore you apps and sms from backups.
6)Enjoy your new custom rom.

ADDED 28 JULY 2010 : Custom Recovery

If you want you can now have your own custom recovery.

You can either install Rom Manager from the market which automates the whole process.
Or do it manually everytime.

Koush stated that the way samsung partition it's kernal and recovery we can't have a permanent custom recovery like our HTC counterpart. So instead we have a fake flash method. The below is takne from XDA

Remember there will always be a update.zip in the root of your sdcard(internal memory) this allows you manually flash the custom recovery whenever you want.
With the new recovery you can just flash any zip file regardless of name so you don't have to worry about more then one update.zip file.





So enjoy your rooted Samsung Galaxy S.

Disclaimer :

I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards, thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because you lost all your data. Please do some research before flashing! YOU are choosing to make these modifications, and if you point the finger at me for messing up your device, I will laugh at you.


This post has been edited by naTTan: Jul 28 2010, 12:07 PM