Certain rumors have been circulating for the past few days regarding the fact that Galaxy S2 would not get, wait for it, Google’s latest OS Jelly Bean due to it Hardware Limitations. This rumor was originated from CP, which always cited non-credible sources.
If it only had been CP spreading the rumor, it wouldn’t be such a mess but what happened was that, various tech sites believed that rumor and started to spread the word, leaving Galaxy S2 users shocked upon hearing that their beloved smartphone – which is quite hard to replace even with Galaxy S3 – will not be getting Google’s latest OS which is packed with tons of exciting features/improvements.
Here’s what CP had to say :-
S2 lacks some of the components it would need to allow the OS to run smooth and efficiently on the smartphone.
Some of these hardware limitations include low screen resolution, with most S2s having a 800 x 480 resolution, and the fact that it features a dual-core processor, while quad-core chips are preferred for JellyBean.
the handset will not run as smoothly with JellyBean and TouchWiz working simultaneously.
First of all, quad-core processors are preferred for Jelly Bean? really?. Little did the author knew that latest Galaxy Nexus which is the first smartphone to run Jelly Bean is a “Dual Core” and not just that, along with Galaxy S2 featuring a better performing dual-core processor, it features a Mali-400 GPU as well which is far more powerful than the Galaxy Nexus Smartphone.
Talking about the resolution, the good old Nexus S (which is also set to have Jelly Bean) has the same 480 x 800 resolution as that of Galaxy S2, which over-rules the necessity of 720p display. While talking about Touch-Wiz, main reason for Galaxy S1 not getting ICS from Samsung was due to the fact of it’s low RAM which wasn’t enough for Touch-Wiz UI.
Since the Galaxy S2 has the same amount of RAM as that of Galaxy S3(notice that the RAM didn’t increase further), it’s pretty much apparent that S2 will manage to deal with the memory issue unlike Galaxy S.
Overall, it’s silly to say that a smartphone which is more powerful than Galaxy Nexus in almost every way, won’t get JB just to phase out older devices. Galaxy S2 won the best smartphone title for a reason!, it’s perfect in almost every way – take it’s design, unbreakable Gorilla glass protection, 8MP camera – most S2 users wouldn’t even think of switching to Galaxy S3.
Also, the devs have ported JB ROM for Galaxy S2 as well, the performance is quite amazing(for a beta version). NO glitches or problems were encountered which is quite a good indication. See for yourselves.
Despite the fact that it’s just an Alpha build and is not even designed for Samsung devices, the experience was quite great. Samsung is yet to reveal the list of devices compatible with Jelly Bean, but you can be rest assured that Galaxy S2 has almost no reason of not getting JB.
UPDATE :- First Jelly Bean Firmware For Galaxy S2 released. [Download Link]
Very good information.
I don t know if I should sell my S2 and buy the Nexus… Because of the Jelly Bean.
Greetings from Spain
Even If Jelly Bean doesn’t come officially from Samsung, Android community for S2 (which is quite big) will port the official OS.
Compared with Galaxy S2, Galaxy Nexus is quite weaker in terms of performance. Stick with S2 for now