Samsung Galaxy S - Skype and firmware

[ANGELUS]

Well, I recently got a Samsung Galaxy S cellphone. It is a nice enough device... easy to use, easy to get and install applications, and I must say that I'm pretty satisfied with it so far...

I've only ran into a couple of problems: Skype and firmware update. Skype will just not work and every time I try to connect I just get a "Skype stopped working" message and it won't go beyond that.

I've been reading arount and it seems that the problem is my firmware version. It seems that I have a 2.1 version of Android that simply doesn't work with Skype and that I need at least the 2.2 version and preferably the 2.3, so I tought "no big deal, I'll just update it" and I installed the included Samsung Kies software on my home (Windows 7) laptop and after doing that I immediately got a message saying that Kies needed to download some updates for itself, so I let it go ahead. After completely updating Kies started crashing every time I tried to run it. So I took my work laptop (Win XP) and installed Kies there (this time I downloaded the latest version directly from Samsung site instead of installing and updating the included version). It didn't crash this time on that other laptop, so I connected the phone and I immediately got a message saying that there was a new firmware version for my phone and that if I wanted to update it, so I clicked "update". Software seemed to download something into my laptop (new firmware for my phone I presume) and the sent me a message saying "connecting to phone" (wich had not been physically disconnected from the laptop at all) and then.... nothing happened. I just stayed there "connecting to phone" for ten minutes or so doing nothing else... (note that the phone display said that it was indeed connected to the laptop, while the laptop said it was connecting). So I disconnected the phone and tried again, and again several times, every time with the same outcome.

Phone is set for Kies mode(the right mode to update), so in theory it should work. When I connect the phone to the laptop it immediately recognizes it, but when I click "update" it seems to lose the connection and is not able to recover it.

Now, the only reason I wanted to update the firmware was to be able to use Skype, but I'm not aware if there's any other good reason to update it (some security issue with previous versions? some "must have" feature?). If I can't update it well, it won't be a big deal... I can live without Skype on my cellphone but I woud like to have it (it is just a "nice to have" feature for me).

So does anyone know how I might fix this Kies software to be able to update my phone? or does anyone have another easy and legal way to update the firmware withut Kies? or anyone knows an Android software compatible with my phone and firmware that can connect to Skype? or any other good reason at all why I should update the firmware?

Thanks

[charlemagne]

Updating to Gingerbread (2.3) is a must. Samsung's 2.1 for the SGS is terrible, YMMV but my Galaxy S was a laggy piece of shit before Froyo (2.2), Froyo was fine but with 2.3 it finally lived up to the potential and got as snappy as a flagship smartphone should be.

Unfortunately I cannot really help with your connection issues, I've never experienced them, but I know that others do. The way it always worked for me is to connect your phone in Kies Mode, wait until the phone says "connected", and then start Kies on the computer. Oh, and make sure that Kies is not running while connecting the phone, if necessary kill all kies.exe processes in the task manager. If it doesn't work, reboot and try again. Kies is a terrible crappy tool, but if you don't want to mess around with flashing manually using ODIN it's a necessary evil.

[ANGELUS]

Updating to Gingerbread (2.3) is a must. Samsung's 2.1 for the SGS is terrible, YMMV but my Galaxy S was a laggy piece of shit before Froyo (2.2), Froyo was fine but with 2.3 it finally lived up to the potential and got as snappy as a flagship smartphone should be.

Unfortunately I cannot really help with your connection issues, I've never experienced them, but I know that others do. The way it always worked for me is to connect your phone in Kies Mode, wait until the phone says "connected", and then start Kies on the computer. Oh, and make sure that Kies is not running while connecting the phone, if necessary kill all kies.exe processes in the task manager. If it doesn't work, reboot and try again. Kies is a terrible crappy tool, but if you don't want to mess around with flashing manually using ODIN it's a necessary evil.

Thanks for the reply! I just tried this and it seems that it works... this time Kies detected the phone after doing what you said and was about to start the upgrade, but then it told me to charge my phone because battery was low. I'm currently charging it and will try again later, I'll tell you how it goes

[charlemagne]

Yeah, although it gets juice over USB too it really is bitchy about too low battery while updating.

But hey, great that it works now! I've heard about people who simply never got it to work and had to use friend's or their work computers. The whole Kies situation really is a low-point for Samsung.

Another tipp, do a reset to factory settings after updating. While some apps might work just fine after updating it's generally better to just wipe all settings.

[ANGELUS]

Well, it is finally updated but not after several failed attempts. When I got home after work I connected the phone to my work laptop using that method and... it failed. Same problem, connecton was lost every time I tried. So I started thinking "What is different from earlier when I tried at work?" and the answer came to me: I didn't connect the phone directly to the laptop's USB port back at work, but I rather connected it to a USB port on the laptop docking station (wich connects to the laptop through some sort of paralel port on the bottom). So I tried that again and it finally worked! It seems that this Kies software has some issues with USB ports, and when connecting the phone directly it doesn't work, but when you connect it through some other means (like the docking station) it has no issue with it. Funny, huh? One would think that Samsung would have worked that out a long time ago...

Anyway, it is up and running now. Thanks for your advise!

[charlemagne]

Glad it worked!

And yeah, Kies really is a terrible piece of software. Unfortunately it is the only real option if you don't want to read up on "power-user" tools like ODIN (it's just not worth it if you're not the kind of guy that likes to mess with unofficial betas and custom roms).

[Isil`Zha]

After seeing this thread I decided to get mine updated to 2.3.5, since T-Mobile is going to wait until the 24th century to push the update out, apparently.

Tried Kies and had my own issue. Namely, it said "unregistered device" and wouldn't let me even hit the update button. Huh!?

Whatever, I went here and got it updated using the Odin tool no problem.