If you happen to have T-Mobile for your wireless provider of choice and are still rocking the carrier’s version of the Samsung Galaxy S II, you will be interested to know that an update for you handset is now being rolled out. Of course, updates are always welcome because they bring a lot of goodies and treats to our handsets but this particular update has a snag that comes with it – it is only available through Samsung Kies and not via the usual OTA manner so no notifications will come up on your handset regarding the update’s availability.
Once applied to the Samsung Galaxy S II, the said update will crank up the software version of your handset to T989UVLH1 but the Android version remains at 4.0.3. What is interesting though is the goodies it brings – it comes with the usual bug fixes (which is kinda expected) and an Isis / NFC update which is the highlight of the update.
For the uninitiated, T-Mobile is part of the carrier triumvirate in the US together with AT&T and Verizon that is backing the Isis mobile payment system that is designed to compete (or bring down) Google Wallet. Back in the day, it was announced that the new mobile payment system will become available during the summer in Austin, TX and Salt Lake City, UT as its initial launch areas but there were no specifics as to when exactly it will go online. In fact, the launch of Isis got delayed because of a shift in strategy where payments are now expected to be processed through MasterCard or Visa instead of the initial plan of having it processed through the carriers themselves.
Going back to the update, again this is only available through Samsung Kies so if you want to get the update process rolling, you need to hook up your Samsung Galaxy S II from the Magenta carrier and fire up the Samsung Kies software on your computer. By the way, you need to have the latest version of Kies installed and your handset should have at least 50% of juice for the update process to get started.
As for the Samsung Galaxy S II, this is the T-Mobile version of the once venerable Samsung flagship device from last year. It is still pretty impressive despite its age with its QualComm APQ8060 SnapDragon chipset which gives the handset a dual-core 1.5 GHz Scorpion processor and 1 GB of RAM. It was made available in 16GB and 32GB in terms of storage capacity and the handset also comes with a microSD card slot in its chassis for memory expansion purposes. As for its display, the T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S II sports a 4.52-inch SuperAMOLED Plus panel with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels while its camera department includes a rear 8MP shooter and a front 2MP snapper.
August 31, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Kies does not work on the latest MAC OS (Mountain Lion) – so T mobile customers that have MACs are out of luck on these Kies updates. Can’t T mobile just use over the air updates like every other carrier.