Advice for a friend stuck on ICS?

[ttrimmer]

You read right. One of my friends with a S3 is still stuck on ICS. Verizon has been of no help. All they tell him is to keep waiting for the update. Any ideas?

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[scaryhumor]

Did he attempt a manual update?

 

[ttrimmer]

He tried. It gave the no update message.

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[blade22222]

Has he tried a factory reset?

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[ttrimmer]

I'm not sure about a factory reset. I'll have to ask.

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[imhipper]

ttrimmer, did your friend's phone say " Update Service Unavailable " after trying to manually look for a update?
If it did then the only solution that worked for me and many others was to have the SIM card replaced.

 

[GSDer]

Has he tried using Kies (the software that you install on your desktop)? I was under the impression that you could perform a manual software update through that tool.

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[marie727]

Dont update ota go in kies and try updating through there.

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[CTgirl509]

Back when I had my old HTC Droid Incredible and we wanted to force our Gingerbread update (if I recall) we first had to go in and clear the cache. Unfortunately I don't know how to do that on this phone but maybe someone can figure it out or knows how. After that we went in and set the date AHEAD so that the phone would think a lot of time had past and it would look for an update. It worked. After the phone updated we would go back in and set the date to the correct one and done.
I had read up on this in the HTC Droid Incredible forum on this site - for what its worth. Good luck to your friend.

 

[Paul627g]

Its not without the possibility that there could be a issue related to the device itself. Doesn't happen to often but I've seen it in the past where a device just doesn't want to receive the update either OTA or manually forced. In these cases people have gone to the carrier/store where purchased and after reviewing the device themselves they were given a replacement (refurb).

 

[GSDer]

He might try getting a replacement SIM - that's caused this kind of issue for other users. But first try the Kies desktop software.

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[Averix]

He might try getting a replacement SIM - that's caused this kind of issue for other users. But first try the Kies desktop software.

Kies won't update firmware for the Verizon version. It just says it can't do anything for firmware with this model.
First, get the SIM replaced and see if that helps.
Second, factory reset and see if it can find the update then.
After that, you have 4 choices:
1) Be patient, but accept the fact that you may never see an update. The original JB update has been out for some time and your device should have taken it by now.
2) Get Verizon to update it or replace it. (yeah, right...)
3) Use ODIN to flash the full JB ROM. (If a factory reset doesn't work and you want to stay stock, this is what I'd advise.)
4) Root and flash a different ROM and be off the standard OS path.