CyanogenMod 9 Beta 8 For Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830.

CyanogenMod 9 is one of the much anticipated android rom especially for those devices which can't have official Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update as this is their only hope to try out the latest Android software on their smartphone. And, thankfully, a bunch of android developers recognized by the name of GalaxyICS are working on to successfully develop a stable and fully working cyanogenmod 9 custom rom on different series of Samsung's Galaxy series smartphone including but not limited to Galaxy Ace, Mini, Gio and Fit. But, the task is not easy since these devices have minimal hardware which will have hard time to load and run Ice Cream Sandwich on their end. However, with many tweaks in kernel and system the developers have made it possible to have ICS on these devices and have succeeded quite far that in the latest builds most things work perfectly except for the camera. CM9 Beta 8 is the latest release for Galaxy Ace and Gio which has huge improvements.

CyanogenMod 9 Beta 8 for Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 has got many improvements and below is a list of what's working and what not in this latest build.

Working :

• GSM (phone/messages/GPRS/EDGE/3G)
• Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS and All sensors (proximity, rotation etc)
• HW acceleration (full) without flickering.
• Sound and Headphones.
• CyanogenMod settings (not all, it's not fully merged by CyanogenMod team, not my fault)
• Market, GMail, Browser, YouTube, Facebook Sync all work fully.
• Fixed animations (now it looks so good)
• Buttons back-light
• Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard.
• Games - works as smoothly as on Gingerbread.
• Deep sleep
• Native Android mass storage
• Smooth YouTube (LQ right now)
• Live Wallpapers
• FM Radio with Spirit FM radio app from Market.
  Note : To get FM radio working, you must to install Spirit FM app and then go to:
  Settings=>Region frequency=>Europe
  Settings=>Audio=>Method=>msm7x30 Si5500 

Here is also a change log from the developer's thread that lists major changes in the rom since last Beta 7 release.

CM9 Beta 8 GT-S5830

ChangeLog : CM9 Beta 8

• Wifi should be fully working right now.
• YouTube HQ is working, first 5-10 second of movie can be laggy (will be improved)
• Really, really more free RAM.
• Much more faster and smooth system.
• New KGSL backport.
• New genlock backport.
• New adreno framebuffer
• New video decoder in kernel.
• Improved filesystem cache.
• 800MHz is now default CPU clock.
• Fixed overclocking bugs.
• Added KSM for even better performance (enabled by default, you can disable it in Performance settings)
• Fixed IOCTL_KGSL_TIMES​TAMP_EVENT errors.
• Now we are using clean libgenlock
• Improved KGSL page table size
• New Adreno200 libraries for ICS

That's all with the change-log. Some of you might find it quite difficult to understand, since it has used many technical terms. But, for now what you have to understand is that CyanogenMod 9 rom from GalaxyICS team has improved a lot since it started out back and now after climbing 8 ladder of success and coming to Beta 8 release, it has very much improved. With latest release, almost everything works fine, the rom is quite smooth and speedy and some of you might find it hard to believe but it's battery life has been improved and now it has a long battery life which will keep your device running longer than a whole day with moderate use and for at least 4+ days in standby mode.

So, let's not waste the time and flash this latest ICS based cyanongemod 9 custom rom on your Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 smartphone and try it hands on. I'm sure you all will love this update and many of you will stick with it.

Disclaimer : TRY IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Note : Those who have Gingerbread 2.3 and above firmware and any Custom Recovery installed on their device can skip Step 1 and Step 2. Also, if you have any other custom roms then you can skip both Step 1 and Step 2.

1. Upgrade your android firmware to Gingerbread using Odin Multidownloader v4.38.

2. Install latest Clockwork Mod Recovery v5.0.2.6 on your galaxy ace.

3. Download latest CyanogenMod 9.0.0-RC0-GT-S5830-GalaxyICS-KANG-beta8 (cm9_ota-eng-beta8.zip) from the website of GalaxyICS team. [No Mirrors!]

4. Copy the downloaded file to ( the root directory of) your sd-card.

5. Reboot your device to Clock Work Mod Recovery (Press Home + Power Button).

6. [Optional but, Recommended] Do a Nandroid Backup of your current rom.

7. Choose Install Zip From Sd Card=>Choose Zip From SD Card option and then select the cm9_ota-eng-beta8.zip file you downloaded and copied to sd-card from galaxyics website.

8. Wait few minutes for the rom to be flashed and once it is done; Wipe Data and Wipe cache from clockwork mod recovery main menu.

9. Reboot your device from your recovery main menu when everything is done and wait for few minutes (5-10 mins) before your device boots up.

That's all. You have successfully flashed latest Beta 8 version of CyanogenMod 9 rom on your Galaxy Ace GT-S5830 smartphone. It sure is an awesome rom and there's no doubt you won't like it. So, go play with it for a while and once you are done, please tell us what do you think about this rom at the comments below. If you happen to come across a bug then, you can submit it at https://github.com/GalaxyICS/android/issues?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open if it not listed already.

Also, Maclaw and his team has started working on next version and few bugs that are found on this have already been fixed. So, there's no doubt next version will be much more spicier than this one. If you want to help the development process speed up then you can contribute a small sum of amount to the developers at their official site.The excitement of stable CM9 being developed continues, in the meantime you will just need to wait patiently and stayed tune