This page provides information on installing CyanogenMod 10.1 (CM10.1) on a Verizon Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE SCH-i905. It should be relevant for closely related models but I make no guarantees.
This information follows that from Droidbasement.com’s entry CyanogenMod 10 – Galaxy Tab 10.1, March 6, 2013. As of this writing this is the most current stable release of CyanogenMod for the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Backing up the sdcard
Before starting on all this, I want to mention a way to back up all your data from the sdcard of the Galaxy Tab. One way to do it is to connect the Tab to a computer and hope that file transfer works. However, in my experience, file transfer between the Tab and PC over USB connection is horrible. It often fails to transfer, and transfers are ridiculously slow.
But there is a very good way to transfer data. Install a free utility called Minimal ADB and Fastboot on a PC you want to transfer files to or from. Once this is done, adb must be launched from a console window. Using a Cygwin terminal or a standard Windows console you may need to navigate to Program Files (x86)/Minimal ADB and Fastboot directory. Then you can run adb.exe push or pull commands to transfer files to and from the sdcard. This is vastly faster and more reliable than trying to use Windows explorer.
Before doing this I recommend installing Titanium Backup and making backups of all your important apps. The backups will be saved to a folder on the sdcard called TitaniumBackup.
I recommend getting a copy of the stock factory Android ROM which can be flashed to the Tab in the event of a failure. This ROM will reset the Tab back to the way it was out of the box, with the original Android “Honeycomb” 3.1 version.
Crucially it will also put the original modem ROM on the Tab. If in the process of flashing something happens to the modem ROM on the Tab it can lose LTE/4G wireless connectivity therefore having this backup file can be essential. It will restore your Tab to the way it was the day you got it.
The name of the version I found is PDA_HC31_EG01Ba_AP352081user_CP1033580_LTE20110704_0708.tar
This image can be flashed using identical method used to flash ClockworkMod Recovery via Odin explained below. Be advised that this will wipe the contents of the sdcard meaning any files, photos, data, etc. will be erased. I therefore strongly recommend copy all data from the sdcard of the Tab to a safe place before starting any of this!
All that said, there is no reason to really worry in going through this process. It is actually not that easy to totally brick a device. Even if flashing of the recovery environment fails – and its happened to me due to crappy USB drivers – nothing bad happens. One just has to reflash (and make sure to connect to a PC with working drivers. I’ve had bad luck with Windows 8 so far but good luck with Windows 7.)
I also recommend highly installing Titanium Backup Pro at this point if you don’t already have it and making backups of important apps. Also, make sure to copy the sdcard contents to another drive so that the backup (and all your other data) will not get lost!
Before proceeding with the installation below, it will be necessary to make sure the tablet is updated with all the current “over the air” (OTA) updates. Starting from the stock factory ROM, if connected to a high speed Internet connection these updates will occur rather rapidly, one after the other. I believe there are three or four in total. Each one will request the Tab to reboot and install the update. The final OTA update is the one that installs the Android “Ice Cream” (ICS) 4.0 release. Again, its important to make sure the Tab is updated to this release version before proceeding.
I chose to install the stock factory ROM and do all the updates because CM10.1 has to be installed on an unmodified, clean system. Since my system had been rooted and there were a lot of possibilities for utilities and apps to have modified the system files, I wanted to be completely sure I was using a fresh system.
Once it is, the process for installing CM10.1 begins. Here we go:
First we are going to need some things to make this all happen. We need:
Samsung drivers – this is one of the worse parts of this whole process. Quite frankly, I’ve had major issues with Samsung drivers on at least one laptop, although on another they work fine. This means that I was not able to get Odin to work properly to flash the Tab via one of my laptops (running Windows 8). Luckily I had a second one (Windows 7) which had no problems. I don’t know if this is a Windows issue or an issue with the Samsung drivers, or both.
To get the drivers I recommend installing Kies from Samsung. After installing, launch Kies and it may ask to do an update. It will also ask to install USB drivers and its important to say yes.
Hopefully at that stage everything will work. If you connect the Tab right now with ICS on it hopefully the Tab will show up under “Computer” in Windows Explorer. It should be listed as “SCH-i905”.
Odin – Odin is a nice, free utility that can flash things to the tab via connection to a PC. I got a copy from a link on this thread at the eminent xda-developers.com site. That link has something like 4 or 5 versions of Odin which is overkill. I only ended up using the most recent 3.07.
The ROMS – We need to get two roms from Droidbasement:
“Recovery – ClockworkMod 6.0.3.0 (CM 10.1) – Galaxy Tab 10.1” for LTE. Make sure to get the LTE version for the SCH-i905. As of this writing that is the most current ClockworkMod he has released. It may be that in the future version 6.0.3.0 will be superceeded by a newer one, in which case just follow the info on his site. The name of the actual file to download will be recovery.tar.md5
“CyanogenMod 10 – Galaxy Tab 10.1” – the actual ROM for CyanogenMod, the nice, new shiny OS we are going to install. Get the version P4VZW: http://droidbasement.com/galaxy/roms/cm10/p4vzw The name of the actual file is cm-10-20130306-UNOFFICIAL-p4vzw.zip
gapps – The file gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip from goo.im/gapps There are other versions there, some more recent, but trust me we need this exact one. These are the essential Google Apps need to have the Play Store and to be able to set up the Google account for the store, mail, contacts, etc.
Here are the steps to install CM10.1:
1. Power off the Tab by pressing and holding power button and select power off. Boot into recovery (vol up + power key on boot). There will appear two icons on the screen, one like a triangle, one a green robot. Vol up moves cursor between icons, vol down selects. Select the green robot icon (which is selected by default so you should only just have to press the vol down button). Follow instructions on screen: press vol up again (I had to press it twice) to bypass the warning and enable the update mode.
2. Start Odin. Connect the Tab which is now in update mode. When connected the slot on the left for ID:COM should turn a green or bluish color indicating the Tab is connected. Check the box next to PDA, then click the PDA button and select the recovery.tar.md5 file just downloaded. Under Option unselect Auto Reboot. Press Start and it should flash within 5-10 seconds.
Nothing eventful will happen other than the green bar in the upper left box of Odin will progress to fill the entire box and that is it. It should say it completed in the information output.
Now disconnect the cable from the Tab. Press and hold the power button until it powers off. Now – THIS IS IMPORTANT – the Tab may automatically reboot. Be prepared for this when powering it off. After 5-10 seconds the screen may light up and the Samsung logo in white text will come up. When this happens we must go into recovery again by pressing vol up + power. Be ready to do this. If the Tab boots up and bypasses going into recovery, it will overwrite the recovery we just flashed and this whole flash process will have to be done again. Its not a big deal but just an annoyance.
Once in recovery you will see the nice, new ClockworkMod 6.0.3.0 recovery with its light blue font which is much nicer than the stock one. At this stage it would be a good time to make a backup. There’s an option in the menu to do this. To navigate in ClockworkMod use the up/down volume keys, and press power to select. If you make a backup now you will have a full backup of a stock ICS system. These backups are called a “nandroid” in the forums.
Once that is done, its ok to select the reboot option. When this is done a message will say that recovery may be overwritten, do you want to fix. Navigate down and select this option. We definitely want this. Once this is done we are halfway there!
3. Now with the Tab rebooted back into ICS attach it to the computer and copy the two files onto it that we need:
cm-10-20130306-UNOFFICIAL-p4vzw.zip
gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip
You can put them in the top-level under SDCARD or as I like to do in the Download directory.
4. Power off the Tab (press and hold the power button and select Power Off). Power on and go into recovery again. In recovery there are the following steps:
a. Wipe system/factory reset – it sounds scary but it is not. It needs to be done to prepare the Tab for the new system. It will not delete any files on the sdcard.
b . Wipe cache – this is actually redundant. The previous step does this. But everyone mentions it in their advice so I also put it here. You can skip this step because you just did a factory reset which also wipes the cache.
c. Wipe Dalvik Cache – this is an option under Advanced. When finished, select Go Back to go to the previous menu and:
d. Install from .zip option. Select the zip to flash: navigate to the file on the sdcard cm-10-20130306-UNOFFICIAL-p4vzw.zip Then go for it and flash it. It will take a few minutes because its a large image.
When finished select .zip gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip and proceed to flash.
e. Reboot
THAT IS IT WE ARE DONE!
One amazing thing that can be done under CyanogenMod is that there is a new section in the Settings called Performance. There one can change the maximum CPU frequency to 1400. One can also change the CPU governer to “performace”. This makes the CPU always run at the max speed. This makes a huge improvement of the performance ofthe Tab (at the expense of battery life, but can easily be changed back to the “on demand” setting at will).
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