Samsung Galaxy Core (samsung-arubaslim)

Contributors

 * AAT596

Basic Information
Samsung Galaxy Core GT-I8260 single sim card slot model and Samsung Galaxy Core GT-I8262 dual sim card variant are smartphone manufactured by Samsung Electronics that runs on the open source Android 4.1.2 Jellybean operating system. Announced by Samsung in early May 2013, the Dual-SIM model has been released in mid-to-late May 2013, and the single-SIM version for July 2013.

Requirements
The Samsung Galaxy Core I8260/I8262 already comes with an unlocked bootloader.

The only requirement is having TWRP installed on the device (you need to flash it via ODIN). Download here.

Although there are newer TWRP versions for this phone, such as this one or that one, they do not work properly on the I8260 variant, at least. The NovaFusion TWRP provided above is known to work properly.

Installation
There are no special tweaks needed for the installation. Check the installation guide.

The recommended method I use is flashing an Android recovery zip through TWRP, `pmbootstrap export` and copying the generated zip to the device while it's in recovery mode (adb push). Flashing to userdata is recommended, as system partition is very small.

What works

 * Booting
 * SSH through USB cable
 * Display

What does not work

 * Everything else, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Audio, GPU, Hardware Acceleration...

Note: Tried to install the firmware `linux-firmware-ath6k` to see if WiFi works (like it's done on other devices), without success.

Partition Scheme
~ # cat /proc/partitions major minor #blocks  name

179       0    7634944 mmcblk0 179       1         20 mmcblk0p1 179       2        175 mmcblk0p2 179       3      20480 mmcblk0p3 179       4          1 mmcblk0p4 179       5       1000 mmcblk0p5 179       6       1000 mmcblk0p6 179       7       2000 mmcblk0p7 179       8      12288 mmcblk0p8 179       9       3072 mmcblk0p9 179      10       3072 mmcblk0p10 179      11       4096 mmcblk0p11 179      12       8192 mmcblk0p12 179      13      12288 mmcblk0p13 179      14       4096 mmcblk0p14 179      15       4096 mmcblk0p15 179      16      12288 mmcblk0p16 179      17      24576 mmcblk0p17 179      18       4096 mmcblk0p18 179      19        512 mmcblk0p19 179      20       2048 mmcblk0p20 179      21    1331200 mmcblk0p21 179      22     737280 mmcblk0p22 179      23     327680 mmcblk0p23 179      24    5115488 mmcblk0p24

~ # df -h Filesystem               Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on tmpfs                   421.3M    128.0K    421.2M   0% /dev tmpfs                  421.3M     12.0K    421.3M   0% /tmp /dev/block/mmcblk0p22 709.5M    12.9M    696.6M   2% /cache /dev/block/mmcblk0p24 4.8G     1.3G      3.5G  27% /data /dev/block/mmcblk0p24 4.8G     1.3G      3.5G  27% /sdcard /dev/block/mmcblk0p21 936.4M   714.5M    221.9M  76% /system /dev/block/mmcblk0p23 315.2M    45.0M    270.2M  14% /preload /dev/block/mmcblk0p12 7.9M     4.1M      3.8M  52% /persist /dev/block/mmcblk0p16 11.8M     4.2M      7.7M  35% /efs

Hardware status
Status for Mainline (M) kernel:

Based on deviceinfohw.ru:

No framebuffer console
This device does not have framebuffer console. In other words, kernel output won't be shown on screen during the boot process.

If 'console' UI is selected, the screen will be black, but an USB can be connected to the device for SSH connection and USB Network.

Logs
Note: Although having the I8260 variant, I (AAT596) used a ROM for I8262, as both devices almost share the same hardware.

However, I8260 has one-SIM only, and I8262 has dual-SIM.


 * dmesg from TWRP 2.7 (original I8260 port): https://pastebin.com/raw/izu4HfeV
 * dmesg from CM12 (I8262 ROM port, I8260 device): https://pastebin.com/raw/YRdm1pVt
 * adb logcat from CM12 (I8262 ROM port, I8260 device): adb-logcat-CM12-I8262ROM_I8260.txt