Last Updated on November 5, 2016 by Mathew Diekhake
One of the negative aspects about owning older handsets instead of upgrading to something newer is the fact that the firmware doesn’t get updated as often and eventually it won’t continue to see the updates at all. Galaxy S3 owners don’t need to worry about that just yet, however, because Android 4.4 KitKat will be coming to the old flagship phone from Samsung. Even though it is getting older now, because it was such a popular Smartphone, this works in its favor for continued support from the manufacturer because there’s still a lot of people using them.
The bad news is that this isn’t KitKat, but rather another version of jelly Bean called XXUGNA5. It will come with some bug fixes and improvements. A lot of the time with firmware it is only released in regions. That’s where the issues we found which is why it gets released in those parts over the air. That doesn’t mean that if you live outside of that area that you can’t upgrade to the newer build if you want to though. It just means that Samsung is not going to go to the trouble of releasing it to your phones for you. Instead, users will have to download and install it manually with the help of Samsung’s official Odin tool.
Android 4.3 Features You will Find In This Update
We have spent a lot of time researching Android Jelly Bean and blogging about it as it’s been around for most of the time we have blogged. That means you’re in luck if you want to find out what cool things you can do on this version that you couldn’t do before.
If you’re anything like me then you will like to play games. Google Play games come pre-installed on Android 4.3. You can see it if you scroll down the apps page and look for a green picture of a control. Previously this was available to download from the Play store in the older versions. Nobody knows exactly why they might have done this. If we were to take a guess it would be to try to make it more popular than what it was. We sometimes forget the average person can’t install things as easily as somebody who is deeply into the technology, so if we can help them out and make life easier, that should result in more people using it.
Android has given users an extra reason to be signed in to the Google account. Now if people sign in to two different devices, then when they are playing a game on the phone, then can continue from where they left off on the tablet.
Android 4.3 is known as being a lot smoother than the earlier version of Android 4.2. A lot of this is attributed to the graphics helping it out and making it look smoother also. So even though your screens are the same you should still notice an improvement in what you are looking at on the screen. That’s also very relevant to what we have here for you today, because this particular XXUGNA5 build is going to enhance the stability even more.
Prerequisites
- Back up all the devices data to the internal memory.
- Make sure you have the Samsung USB driver installed so that it can connect to the computer without any hassles. You can get it here.
- Be ready to lose any custom recovery image you had before such as TWRP or CWM recovery because flashing a stock firmware will erase it. If you haven’t done any customizing then you don’t need to worry about this.
- You won’t lose the warranty by following this device. Furthermore, if you had been involved in activities such as gaining root access, your warranty will be fully restored again after following this guide.
- Make sure there is adequate battery life on the handset before starting the guide so that it doesn’t run out before we have finished it. Because the S3 is getting old now, the battery likely won’t be as good as what it was when it was new. That means you should try to have as much as possible. If you can’t have a full battery then at least try for above 80%.
Installing XXUGNA5 Android 4.3 jelly Bean On The Samsung Galaxy S3
1. To install it, get the firmware file from this page. It is really popular at the moment and has a waiting time attached to it so you can see how long it is going to take. They offer a premium package which you have to pay for and with it they will make it download to your computer faster.
2. Prepare and run Odin as well as update the USB drivers so that the Galaxy S3 is recognized with a connection at the computer.
3. Power, Volume Down and Home on the phone will enter it in download mode. We want this mode working before we connect to Odin.
4. Plug the phone into the USB slot on the computer and look inside Odin for a message appearing that lets you know it is added successfully. Now when this happens we know that the device is detected and recognized so we can continue with the installation.
5. Click the button labelled PA and upload the XXUGNA5 official firmware file to it. Once it’s in the slot you can then click the start button. The flash of the file will now begin.
6. Remember to always right-click the USB symbol in the Windows taskbar and click on the green arrow that says ‘safely remove hardware’ when you hover the cursor over it. Now right-click > select the gray area > USB Mass Storage Device > stop button > select the flash drive in the ‘stop a hardware device’ section and click OK. It will now say ‘safe to remove hardware’ in a bubble that’s popped up on the taskbar