Last week I blogged about a pretty severe flaw in some of Samsung's phones. If you use copy & paste too many times - the phone reboots or resets.
So, I ranted and raved on my blog and in the press. Samsung wouldn't respond to me - either through customer support or through their PR team. Nice way to treat a paying customer, guys!
There is an OTA update for the Galaxy Note II - taking it to 4.1.2. Sadly this isn't yet being pushed out via all UK carriers (including O2, who I work for).
As far as I can tell, the update does fix the bug. I've only been trying it for an hour - but it seems that copying no longer crashes the device.
There are a bunch of other minor changes which you can see in this video.
So, this is the fairly quick and simple way to upgrade your GN2.
Get The Firmware
The site SamFirmware lists just about every available firmware for Samsung devices.
According to them, this is the latest OTA for the GN2.
Caution! you have no way of knowing what that file does. It does not come from an official source. If it makes your phone explode, or fills it with state sponsored malware - that's just too bad.
I mean, would it kill Samsung to list their official firmwares on their site?
Stick the file on your phone
I used my microSD card. The file is over 1GB, so make sure you have plenty of room.
Upgrade
The easiest way to install ROMs on your phone is to use Mobile Odin. It's an Android app which takes care of all the hard work for you. Run it, point it at the update file, and off it goes. Costs less than £4 which is very reasonable.
Choose "Open File" and select the zip.
The app will ask you a few questions and then start the upgrade.
Pace up and down nervously
The whole process takes less than five minutes. But there's always a risk with something like this that it will spontaneously combust.
All being well, the phone will spring back to like with an upgraded OS and a clipboard that doesn't crash the entire phone.
I still don't understand why Samsung insist on treating their customers this way - but at least the issue is now fixed.