How to Update Samsung Galaxy S Plus GTI9001 To CM9 Android 4.0.4 ICS Firmware

For the owners of Samsung Galaxy S Plus GT I9001 who have been waiting for the official Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update, there is still no information about the update roll out. The good news, Cyanogen Mod developers were able to finish a firmware for your device–Cyanogen Mod 9 (CM9) firmware based on Android 4.0.4 ICS. This package can easily be implemented on your device, provided you follow the tutorial below step-by-step.

However, this tutorial is for the people who are willing to take the risk for the greater good. But for those who simply love their device that they don’t want custom ROMs to run on it, then you better wait for the official update. Now, if you wish to continue with this process, try to check the pre-requisites below and fulfill them faithfully.

Pre-Requisites

A. Backup everything in your phone that you don’t want to lose should things go out of hand and that includes your SMS, music, video, files, settings, etc… There have been reported corruptions of data during this process. Although it’s rare but there’s a possibility so you don’t want to take any chances.
B. Make sure your device has at least 70% of battery. The tendency when the process is interrupted due to power loss is that your phone will become inoperable. Again, just for safety, you might as well recharge your device to it full.
C. Turn off or disable all your security suites including your antivirus apps. We are dealing with an unofficial firmware here and there are times these security apps may pick up wrong files and quarantine/delete them.
D. Enable USB Debugging on your device since you will be connecting it to your computer. To do this you need to go to Settings => Applications => Development => USB Debugging.
Assuming you have done the things mentioned above, it’s time to do the process step-by-step.

Updating Samsung Galaxy S Plus GT I9001

Step 1: First, you need to download the CM9 Android 4.0 ICS package here and Google Apps here and save them into your computer in a directory you can easily find and access. The ICS package is around 120MB so depending on your connection, it may take a little while to finish downloading it.
Step 2: Connection your Samsung Galaxy S Plus GT to your computer using the original USB cable and copy both packages to your phone’s SD card. Make sure you don’t put them inside a sub-directory as they will become undetectable. After they have been copied, disconnect your phone from your computer and turn it off.
Step 3: Put your Samsung Galaxy S Plus into Recovery Mode holding down the Volume Up, Home and Power buttons together. If your devices fails to boot into Recovery Mode, do this step again until it does.
Step 4: Assuming you are now inside the Recovery Mode, choose “Wipe data/factory reset” followed with “Wipe Cache partition” to clear all the data in your phones memory.
Step 5: Still inside the Recovery Mode, select “install zip from sd card” then “choose zip from sd card” and browse to your phone’s SD card and choose “CM9 ICS 4.0.4 Package” then the “Google Apps” package.
Step 6: After you’ve chosen these files, it will take around 5 to 7 minutes for the device to update the firmware. You just have to wait until you will be brought back to the Recovery Mode screen. There are times when the device is rebooted automatically after the update.
Step 7: If you landed on Recovery Mode, choose “++++ Go Back ++++” and select “reboot system now,” otherwise you are good to go.
There you have it! That’s how you update your Samsung Galaxy S Plus GT I9001 to CM9 Android 4.0.4 ICS firmware. You can check the version to see if it’s really running on ICS 4.0.4.