I was recently eligable to upgrade from my original Motorola Droid and choose to go with one of Verizon’s new LTE handsets. The Samsung Charge (SCH-I510) is a great phone and does everything one would expect a modern smartphone to do, but makes a great example of how phone manufacturers customize Android devices to the point they can become very frustrating to use. This is an unfortunate side effect of Android’s openness, and often tarnishes Android’s reputation as a mobile OS. In my case, occasional performance issues that make the phone unusable until rebooted.
Many, if not all Samsung handsets use a proprietary file system for the phone’s flash memory (which has been manufactured by Samsung as well) called RFS (Robust FAT File System). After researching this further, many people seem to be pointing fingers to RFS as the cause of many performance problems on Samsung devices.The solution comes in the form of a custom kernel that converts the RSF file system to EXT4.
After much trial and error getting it to flash properly due to the new EE4 update from Verizon blocking the GingerBreak exploit (used for rooting), I was able get full root and flash the new kernel with the instructions in this thread from XDA Developers. The only note that was missing from the instructions for installing CWM was that you cannot let the phone boot into the stock Samsung ROM after flashing CWM. This will remove it and require your to flash it again. Once you get the firmware flashed it will prevent the phone from reverting the recovery back to stock automatically.
**[HOW-TO] Get a rooted version of EE4
** http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1122657
I used the PeanutButta Jelly Time firmware which includes the Voodoo lagfix. After that I used the GummyCharge ROM to replace the stock Samsung ROM. It is only running 2.2 at the moment, but I will likely start trying other ROMs down the road. This thread outlines what is currently available.
The following links are for the packages I used. Plug them in as needed when running through the instructions.
- Samsung Windows Drivers
- Odin (see thread, step 2 in the Preliminary steps)
- Clockwork Mod Recovery
- PeanutButta Jelly Time Kernel
- GummyCharge ROM. The original thread can be found here.
- I personally did not have trouble writing to the SD Card on the phone from Windows when I had it plugged in via USB. I was able to skip step 7 in the preliminary section**. If not, proceed with patching as instructed.**