International Galaxy S3 (I9300) Gets A Working Android 4.4 KitKat Port From Its Korean Brother

International Galaxy S3 (I9300) gets a working Android 4.4 KitKat port from its Korean brother

BY Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh is a 26-year old freelance writer from Kolkata, India. He loves to tinker around with his Android devices and flash custom ROMs on them....

All Articles by Rajesh Pandey

Published 25 Sep 2014

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Earlier this year, Samsung announced that it will not be bringing the Android 4.4 KitKat update to the Exynos variant of the Galaxy S3 because it only comes with 1GB RAM.

Considering that Google itself recommended KitKat for all Android devices running 512MB RAM or higher, this move from Samsung was not welcomed by millions of S3 owners across the globe.

Taking things into their own matter, a developer over at XDA has managed to port the official Android 4.4 ROM from the Exynos LTE (Korean) variant of the S3 that comes with 2GB of RAM to the 3G only variant — which has a wider user base but only comes with a gig of RAM. This means that along with Android 4.4 KitKat, Galaxy S3 owners will get to enjoy all the benefits offered by Samsung’s TouchWiz UI as well, unlike the other KitKat based ROMs currently available for the device.

For a port, the ROM is stable enough to be used a daily driver. As of now, the only issues plaguing it are an incorrect signal strength reading and the inability to send text messages.

None of these bugs are truly deal breaking and should not discourage Galaxy S3 owners from flashing this ROM on their handset, provided they are ready to get their hands dirty with rooting and flashing.

[Via XDA]