I have an old but capable Samsung Galaxy S2 that has remained unused for several months but when my Nexus 7 tablet was stolen (along with most of my camera equipment, but not my Canon 6D fortunately) a week ago I wanted another device my son could use.
One of the requirements for any such device is that only I install new apps or games. I already have a PIN on purchases but there’s so much spam on the Play Store that I suspect at least some of those Minecraft clones are up to no good. On the Nexus 7 I could use a restricted account and choose what apps or games my son could run but my S2 was running an old version of Cyanogenmod and it looks like CM isn’t supporting it any more.
NeatROM for the S2 to the rescue! It’s a KitKat 4.4.2 based ROM for the Galaxy S2 and it was a fairly painless install. You’ll need to flash a KitKat compatible CWM Recovery first, then the ROM and then Google Apps. All those things are listed on the page above.
It was then I realised and remembered that the multiuser support in Android 4.2+ is for tablets only. Luckily the code is already there but it’s switched off and someone else has already taken care of it with the Modaco toolkit for Xposed. Unfortunately after installing this the first time the phone wouldn’t boot so I had to start from scratch again but the second time it worked fine. I enabled multiuser support in Modaco and the Users menu appeared in Settings!
Unfortunately I needed to login to the Amazon Appstore in the restricted account, but a PIN should stop any accidental purchases.
The S2 is showing it’s age. I suspect the flash memory is starting to wear down. When I tried to install multiple apps at one time the Play store stopped downloading them and I had to stop the download. The original battery is rubbish but a larger replacement lasts a few hours.
It plays a mean game of Angry Birds however, which is all my son cares about now!
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I’d also suggest giving the slimROM 4.4.2 for the S2 a try. They strip out a lot of unnecessary bloat leaving a fast and functional android build that runs smooth on the s2:
http://slimroms.net/index.php/downloads/dlsearch/viewcategory/1058-i9100
My dead USB port on my SGS2 has left me stuck on the original software. That, coupled with the suspect flash memory (apps randomly disappearing) is definitely making the phone feel very long in the tooth.
Hi, just order a replacement charging port board from amazon they are cheap as chips and will sort out your problem. It took me ten minutes to swop out and it fixed my dead port problem immediatly.