Hey folks,

two reasons why I wanted to replace the Samsung ROM on my Galaxy SII with cyanogenmod:

  • Samsung does not provide updates anymore and the latest released version for the i9100 is based on Android 4.1.2. I am a security fanatic, thus I prefer to use current versions.
  • In context of NSA and the global privacy/surveillance issues, I don’t trust any major corporation - including Google. Thus I want to keep the number of Google apps on my phone as small as possible. Many (non-essential) Google Apps cannot be uninstalled from a standard installation.

Official infos about cyanogenmod on the I9100 can be found here and the official installation instructions here.

Download latest snapshot of CM11: click

Download nightly of CM11: click

The overall procedure is as follows:

  • Install a (recent!) recovery on Galaxy S II.
  • A recovery is a special boot environment from which you can make administrative changes to your phone, which you cannot from within a booted Android (e.g. format cache,data,system,backup,restore,replace installed Android by custom ROM). The preinstalled recovery is NOT recent enough to install CM11.
  • I used the ClockworkMod recovery (CWM-KitKatCompatible-i9100.zip)
  • Download recovery (zip) and cm11 build (zip) from the above links and copy them to the SD card of your I9100.
  • Boot into recovery
  • Restart/Shutdown your phone. Turn it on again by holding the buttons Power+Home+VolumeUp
  • Update recovery
  • Click “install from zip file” and select the recovery zip file (CWM-KitKatCompatible-i9100.zip)
  • Restart phone into new recovery
  • Choose restart from the menu and follow the same procedure as in 3. to boot into the newly installed recovery
  • Install CyanogenMod
  • Again, “install from zip file” and choose the CM11 zip file
  • If desired, install gapps package containing official Google apps e.g. Google Play Store, Google Maps…
  • The most recent version of the official gapps package is available here. However, the most recent version is only compatible to latest nightlies of CM and not to the Snapshot M7! Overall, it’s preferable to install patched versions available in this thread, which also has links to older versions.
  • Warning: Snapshot M7 requires version 4.4.2, latest nightlies require 4.4.3! Thus, the linked version on the official site only works for the nightlies. Installing the wrong version will lead to various errors including crashing Play Store (also “no connection”), crashing Browser/Hangouts/Play Service.. Also, I was not able to register my google account anymore and it terminated with an error like could not connect to the google servers.
  • Some of the error messages I encountered:
    • Unfortunately, Google Play Store has stopped
    • Unfortunately, Google Play Services has stopped
    • No connection" in Google Play Store