If you happen to have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for your mobile weapon of choice, you should consider yourself luck. With the handset being a Google developer device running a fully stock version of the Android operating system, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn’t have any custom user interface overlaid on top of its operating system which makes update the handset to a new version of the Google mobile operating system a whole lot easier compared to a handset with a custom UI such as the Samsung Galaxy S III or the HTC One X. This is also the reason as to why the handset always gets first dibs on the latest Android version just like what we saw when the handset immediately got a taste of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean after it was released back in July.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Verizon is on sale now starting at 29.99.
However, if you have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus from Verizon, things start to become more complicated. Despite the fact that the handset is the same Google developer device, the carrier-branding interferes with the update process and delays it unnecessarily because the carrier has to fully certify the update first before it gets rolled out. For the longest time, those rocking an unlocked version of the handset have been enjoying Jelly Bean on their Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones while those who got theirs from Verizon had to wait a couple of months more before getting things such as Google Now and Project Butter on their devices.
After much dilly-dallying, Verizon finally started the rollout of the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update to its variant of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to the delight of its users. However, the rollout is done on a staggered manner so not everybody will get the update at the same time. In fact, you will never know as to when it will finally land on your handset for that matter. But if you have no plans of waiting around for that little notification, you have the option of taking matters into your hands by manually updating your Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus to Jelly Bean.
First, you need to be running a stock build with custom recovery on your Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus and have the JRO030 OTA file. Place the OTA file on the SD card of your handset reboot into recovery. Once done, all you have to do is choose “install” or “install from zip” and look the OTA file in your SD card. afterwards, you just need to flash it and reboot the system and before you know it, your Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus is already on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
A word of caution though – this whole process will break root access on your Samsung Galaxy Nexus so things like OTA RootKeeper or flashing SuperSU on your handset will come in handy once the whole Jelly Bean manual install process has been completed and you want to go back to having root access to your handset.
Buy the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Verizon now starting at 29.99.
