Tutorial Upgrade Samsung Galaxy S2 to 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich UCLE5

How to Upgrade your Samsung Galaxy S2 SGH-i777 to Android ICS 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich UCLE5

Here's the step by step method on how to upgrade your AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II SGH-I777 to the latest official Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich software with build number I777UCLE5.

Updating via KIES
Update is being pushed out slowly, but I figured out a way to forcibly do it in kies.
It simple. Do not plug in your phone while you are doing this.

First, make sure you update to the new version of kies. Then go to the menu bar> tools, then firmware upgrade and initialization.

Click until you get to the screen that asks you to input your S/N and Model name of your phone. Enter in these details. It's behind the battery.

Once you do this, a screen will pop up asking if you are sure you want to upgrade to CSC:LE5. AKA ice cream sandwich.

At this point, plug in your phone and it'll go through.


Upgrade manually using Odin.

Grab I777UCLE5 Full stock Odin Flashable tar: I777UCLE5_I777ATTLE5_I777UCLE5_HOME.tar.md5
(Contains I777UCLE5_I777ATTLE5_I777UCLE5_HOME.tar.md5)
Odin Flasher Odin3_v1.83

• Extract the contents of the zip file to a directory on your hard disk drive. This Odin3 One-click downloader contains firmware from the stock binary download available from samfirmware on sammobile.com. The bootloaders boot.bin, sbl.bin and param.lfs have been removed for safety. (Contains cache.img, factoryfs.img, hidden.img, modem.bin and zImage.)
• Run Odin
• Now Enter Download Mode:
  • With the phone powered off, plug in the usb cable while holding the vol up + vol down buttons (but not the power button).
  • When the warning screen appears, press Volume up to continue into download mode.
• In Odin, the small edit box in the upper left corner will turn yellow, and say something like [0:COM8]. The number could be different.
• Click Start. Watch the progress bar advance in green while the message box in the lower area describes the steps. When the flash is finished, the top left larger edit box will turn green and say PASS! and your phone will automatically reboot.
• Unplug the usb cable from you phone after it boots up. Success. You're Bone Stock.
• If your phone enters a bootloop, enter 3e recovery and perform a wipe data/factory reset.

NOTE: Odin3 will recognize both tar and tar.md5 files. When using the tar.md5, Odin will verify the md5 sum first before flashing.


SGH-I777 Users testimonial about the ICS 4.0.3 update: 

So after doing the upgrade yesterday (and wiping out most of the files on my SD card and internal storage ), I played with it all last night and this morning for a while... Then decided to go promptly back to CM9. There were things I liked about TouchWiz on GB, but on my phone everything seemed to just be significantly slower than CM9. There were also quite a few CM features I was missing, such as lock screen shortcuts & widgets, profiles, etc. It'll take me a while to get that all set up again how I want it, but I'm already glad I went back to CM9.

As far as why someone would want to go to the "buggy" official AT&T build, it was really just for the sake of trying it out, to see for myself how good or bad the official stuff is, and to see if I really do prefer the CM9 ICS experience over TouchWiz ICS. I really did like TW Gingerbread over CM7 Gingerbread. I think it's the same curiosity that drives the developers to work on these phones, and that drives all of us to try different custom ROMs, kernels, etc. I think we're all here to find out what our phones can do, and what we can do with them.

In the end, my curiosity has been sated, and I'm happier with CM9, even when there are occasional rough edges. Thanks to all of the devs who work so hard on it, and who work on all the other ROMs, kernels, apps and other related projects. And even though I ended up ditching it, I'd like to express gratitude to the Samsung and AT&T devs (who may or may not hang out on these forums) who have put in work on Android. As much as we hate our carriers, without them we wouldn't have phones or service to run them on. If AT&T didn't offer the GS II, I wouldn't have it right now (with CM9 ).

Ok, been using ICS for a couple of days and I don't see huge changes. Some icons ane menus, gmail is great, but unlike most if you my battery life is no as great as it was before...
Is there a way to make wallpaper scrollable?

No. I assumed that the update through kies updated the bootloaders, so I found a stock 2.3.4 one click odin executable W/ Bootloaders in the development section and flashed that. Make sure you factory reset and clear cache in 3e recovery before you do so. New bootloaders can't take advantage of the Jig. I also didn't want to find out what flashing gingerbread on ICS bootloaders would do my phone.

I find 2.3.6 has battery issues, and I find 2.3.4 to be THE most stable release.

You can find out more here on XDA-Developer discussion thread.