Although Android 4.3 was announced all the way back in July of this year, most manufacturers are still updating their phones to what was once the latest version of Android. Since Google’s mobile OS generally moves at a record-breaking pace with updates, most manufacturers aren’t able to keep up with said update schedule quite as fast since they have to undergo a rather rigorous bug check process and approval of carriers before they ship out their updates. Thankfully for international users the international carriers aren’t as downright ridiculous about approving updates, but still do receive test updates from manufacturers like Samsung and HTC when the latest and greatest Android update for a phone gets pushed out. Case in point with the official Android 4.3 update from Samsung for the Galaxy S III (Model I9300), in which someone inside Vodafone Germany has been kind enough to leak for us to try out. SamMobile was able to procure said update, and we’ve got all the nitty gritty details about what the update changes right here. What you really want to know is how to download and install it on your Galaxy S III, so let’s begin. A word of warning before we begin, everything on your phone, including the internal storage, will be wiped, so please ensure that you’ve backed up ALL your files before proceeding.
First head on over to Hotfile and download the update, which comes in at a rather large 930.3 MB. While not quite as big as some ROMs for the Galaxy S4 or Note 3, it’s still larger than most out there. That’s thanks to all the new features in Android 4.3 and the new Samsung software included in the update. While that’s downloading go ahead and grab ODIN v3.09, which is Samsung’s official update software for power users and techs. Don’t worry if you don’t fit in that category though, it’s pretty simple, although like any update that isn’t automatically being downloaded and applied to your phone there are inherent risks, so don’t continue unless you are sure you’re running an international I9300 Galaxy S III.
Once everything is done downloading, extract the ODIN zip and the update zip into the same folder for easy access. Go ahead and open ODINv3.09.exe and you’ll be greeted with a window that looks just like the one above. Don’t be alarmed by all the settings and boxes here, we’re only concerned with a few. Reboot your phone into download mode by pressing and holding the Home, Power and Volume Down button until the phone reboots. Once it’s in download mode go ahead and connect it to your PC, and once it’s set up it’ll appear in ODIN under the “ID:COM” section as a strange looking number with a blue background. From there you’ll need to add each individual file included in the update you downloaded earlier:
- Click BL and select the file BL_I9300XXUGMJ9_1902166_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5
- Click AP and select the file AP_I9300XXUGMJ9_1902166_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5
- Click CP and select the file MODEM_I9300BUUGMJ3_REV02_REV04_CL1413323.tar.md5
- Click CSC and select the file CSC_VFG_I9300VFGGMJ5_1986192_REV00_user_low_ship.tar.md5
You’ll notice that the CP file is the only one that doesn’t start with the same letters that the selection in ODIN is named, make sure this is the case and you’ll be just about ready to start. From here ensure that only “Auto-Reboot” and “F. Reset Time” are checked and NOT anything else. Checking any other box could cause problems with your phone. Go ahead and click start and you’ll begin the process. Once the phone is done and has rebooted into a screen that looks like the following, you should be good to go.
If you do run into any issues, as in the phone won’t boot after 5-10 minutes or any other strange issues, a simple factory reset will do the trick. Pull the battery out in said case and when you place it back in, hold the Home, Volume Up and Power buttons at the same time when turning it back on. This will bring you into recovery mode, which will enable you to wipe the data on the phone. Again this will erase everything on the phone, so I hope you’ve backed up your stuff at this point. Navigate down to wipe/factory reset by using the volume up/down buttons to scroll, and press the power button to select wipe/factory reset. Once it’s done choose reboot and the phone should boot up no problem. Enjoy Android 4.3 on your international I9300 Galaxy S III!