Samsung Galaxy Ace i (samsung-s5830i)

Contributors

 * takluyver
 * teddynight
 * Mabope

Entering Recovery Mode
Press +  +  to start the phone into recovery mode.

You can choose the items with and  and enter with the  button

Entering flash Mode
Press +  +  to start the phone into flash mode

Installation

 * The previous port from 2018 was outdated (using former APKBUILD format) so a new port was started. We did not achieve to flash the bootimg + intramfs on the device, even if this was stated as working in the previous port (see error in Heimdall below). Any information on how to perform this step is very welcomed. Also keep in mind that the information is not consistent : some information in this page may still reflect the status of the previous port (device booting, kernel flashing etc ...) whereas this section clearly states that we can not get pass the flashing step. If it is confirmed that this step does not work, someone should move this device to the "not booting" section and homogenize this page's content. - Mabope - December 2020

You need Pmbootstrap installed.

Building the kernel (working)
pmbootstrap init # select samsung-s5830i pmbootstrap kconfig check pmbootstrap checksum linux-samsung-s5830i pmbootstrap build linux-samsung-s5830i pmbootstrap checksum device-samsung-s5830i pmbootstrap build device-samsung-s5830i

Flash the kernel to the phone (not working)
This phone is not compatible with fastboot. The kernel was not successfully booted yet, but here are the explored leads.

With heimdall
Heimdall (XDA Forum, gitlab) is the open-source alternative to Odin.

First, enter the flash mode and flash the kernel into the phone. Then, install rootfs to the sdcard. (As there is not enough space on the phone.)

pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/mmcblk0 pmbootstrap flasher flash_kernel

Problem: flashing the kernel fails at the step  with error , you can refer to the 6 years old gitlab issue on heimdall.

Possible workaround: there is a workaround patching heimdall for bypassing libusb checks, more info in comments of github issue: https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall/issues/340

With Odin
Odin is a proprietary software from Samsung to flash Samsung phone. A community forum started in May 2020, with an explanation of the interface.

Create an Odin-compatible file with the following commands.

pmbootstrap install --sdcard=/dev/mmcblk0 pmbootstrap export --odin

Then run the exported file  in Odin using the BL section.

Problem: Odin fails with the following log

 KERNEL.bin.md5  FAIL!

It may come from bad values in the deviceinfo file.

With recovery
You can flash Clockworkmod Recovery (CWM, discontinued in 2016), which enables to flash a zip from sdcard. For S5830i there is only CWM 5.0.2.8 available (maybe others ?), which does not feature sideloading. So you have to export the zip file, copy it to the sdcard and install it in recovery mode.

To create the zip use

pmboostrap install --android-recovery-zip pmbootstrap export

The problem is the size of the android internal partitions. From start you have the following:

$ df -h Filesystem               Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on tmpfs                   144.6M     52.0K    144.6M   0% /dev tmpfs                  144.6M         0    144.6M   0% /mnt/asec tmpfs                  144.6M         0    144.6M   0% /mnt/obb /dev/stl9              219.0M    151.2M     67.8M  69% /system /dev/stl10              35.4M      4.0M     31.4M  11% /cache df: /mnt/.lfs: Function not implemented /dev/stl11             187.3M    130.5M     56.7M  70% /data

And the zip file is 158.9MB so it does not fit into the internal storage.

What works

 * Kernel compiles (https://github.com/androidarmv6/android_kernel_samsung_bcm21553-common )

What does not work

 * No way to flash the kernel on the phone yet

See Broadcom_chipsets

Additional info
Information about this phone is sparse, there is one place with somewhat complete data about that device:

http://specdevice.com/showspec.php?id=3b87-5692-0000-00000033c587


 * XDA-Forum: https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-ace/s5830i-general

There are different kinds of BCM21553 (thunderbird, athena-ray, cooperve, ...), as seen in the list of configs, for this phone the kind is cooperve.

Discontinued port

 * Port from takluyver: repository pull-request

On-going port

 * Port from Mabope: repository

Possible base kernels
Kernels from CM11 are good candidates, corresponding to version 2.6.35. They are built with GCC6 (not tested with more recent GCC versions).

Possible candidates:
 * broadcomCM/android_kernel_samsung_bcm21553-common Last commit August 2014
 * androidarmv6/android_kernel_samsung_bcm21553-common Last commit Dec 2014
 * lokesh3440/android_kernel_samsung_cooperve/tree/master/common Last commit April 2014
 * RafaelBaugis/Kernel-cooperve Last commit March 2014
 * Thunder kernel