Upgrade Android on Galaxy S3 and S7

[Paul Quilty]

Hello,

I'm new to the forum.

Firstly my venerable Galaxy S3 - 3g only (not the LTE version) - currently sitting in a drawer with Android 4.3 as the operating system. Are there any other Android versions that would be better than S3 - even after an op system reload it runs like a pig with the current version.

Secondly, is there any mileage in 3G any more, even if the phone had a better Android version? I live in Reading, about a mile from the town centre. As I approach the town centre I can get about 9Mbps which would be fine for what I want - but at home it's rarely above 2Mbps, and most of the time it's much less, say 0.25Mbps, so effectively useless. Would an improved Android system make any difference? This is with Vodafone.

My newer Galaxy S7 - just wondering if there was any likely improvement from loading something like, Android 10 Q over the Samsung supplied version? What improvements might i get - would the phone run better.

Many thanks,
Paul

 

[Davdi]

If your S7 is Exynos based, there are several alternatives you can try, both Android 10 and 11. look here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/f/samsung-galaxy-s7-exynos-roms-kernels-recoveri.5125/.

If you do want to use Lineage or one of the other alternative ROMs, read in detail and understand exactly what's required. it's easy to brick your phone if you don't understand exactly what steps are needed. Also, and this is important, ROMs (Your phone's OS) are developed for specific phones. An Exynos ROM will not work in a Snapdragon phone and vice-versa. doing so would certainly make the phone inoperable, and maybe not recoverable from.
That said, I've never had trouble with Lineage or other alternative ROms on a variety of phones from HTC and Sony.

Looking on XDA, It seems there are no options for a Snapdragon based S7.

 

[ocnbrze]

please keep in mind that the roms suggested by @Davdi means that the phones will have to be rooted in order to flash those custom roms. this is the only way to get a higher android os onto a older phone such as the ones you have.

also keep in minds that those phones are really old and i doubt most of the devs out there still support those devices. so do not be surprised if a lot of the links in the rooting forums do not work or are dead now.

 

[Hadron]

As for your S3, changing your ROM will not make any difference to your 3G data speeds. Changing the radio firmware might, but unlikely to make much difference, and you are probably using the most recent radio that Samsung provided - unlike ROMs nobody builds their own radio firmware(*), so you can't do anything there except use what Samsung provide. If the bottleneck is other overheads from the Samsung ROM then a slimmer custom ROM might help, but the 3G reception itself is what it is.

(*) The amount of proprietary information you'd need to build your own radio firmware makes it essentially impossible for anyone other than the manufacturer to do this, and a civilian wouldn't have the kit to test it anyway. And if someone did build custom radio firmware for a phone its certification would be invalid and so it would almost certainly be illegal to use it (operating an unlicensed transmitter in any of the cellular radio bands is illegal in the UK).