SLee and Topher

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Archives for November 2012

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Force the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Update

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Samsung Galaxy S3

Why haven’t you received the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Update yet? If you have the Samsung Galaxy S3 with Sprint, you should be able to get it in just a few simple steps.

With both Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II coming out earlier this month, I haven’t made a lot of time for playing with my new Samsung Galaxy S3. But over the Thanksgiving holiday I was out of the house (and away from my Xbox), so I had more time to try and figure out why I hadn’t received the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Update yet.

Like me, you’ve probably read that Sprint began rolling out the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update to Samsung Galaxy S3 owners at the end of October. I picked mine up at the beginning of November, so I thought I would get the update soon. I waited for a couple weeks and still hadn’t received it, even though several of my friends on Sprint told me that they already had. I stumbled on a Samsung support page and the representative told me that indeed the update was available, but that it had to come from Sprint — that there was nothing I could do to trigger the update.

Thankfully, that was incorrect. There are a few simple steps that I took to force the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update on my Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3, and you can too. Follow these 5 steps, and you should be running Jelly Bean in no time.

How to get the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Update in 5 Steps

  1. Open the “Application manager” from the settings menu.
  2. Tap on “Google Services Framework” (you will find this alphabetically under the “All” section).
  3. Tap “Clear data” and “Force stop.”
  4. Go back to the main Settings menu and click “System Update” near the bottom. Tap on “Update Samsung Software.” Since we cleared the data in the last step, this screen will list the date last checked as 12/31/1969.
  5. Tap “Check now.”

At this point your Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3 should find the update and begin downloading it. If it does not, repeat these steps. Some have reported needing to do this two or three times before they found the update.

Android Jelly BeanThe update is pretty big, so it will take a while to download. After it is completely downloaded, you battery will need to be charged to at least 50% (or you must be connected to a charger) to install the update.

And that’s it. Enjoy your Jelly Bean.