Can I accept the Jelly Bean OTA update on a rooted, stock ICS 4.0.3

[handsaway]

Hi all,

I have a newbie question, and I couldn't find the answer in the forum.
I rooted my SGS2 as soon as I got it, mainly to get rid of ads, and samsung bloatwares, using Odin. I just rooted and kept the stock ICS 4.0.3 that came with my phone.
But it was like one year ago, and I have forgotten all the knowledge about rooting, flashing, etc. since then.

A few days ago I received an official notification to update the phone over the air to Jelly bean. I delayed it until now because I'm not sure what the consequences of accepting it are.
1) Can I accept the official update on my rooted, stock ICS phone without breaking anything ?
2) Will I lose root ?
3) If I lose root, and I have some root apps enabled (like app quarantine), what will happen to them?

Thank you very much if you can try to shed some light on these questions,
handsaway

 

[VDub2174]

General rule of thumb is if you want to keep root, don't accept any official OTA updates. You could lose root and those root apps you have might stop working. I'm sure someone over at XDA has a Stock JB ROM for you to flash. That way, you get to keep root and get all the benefits of JB.

 

[handsaway]

Thanks for your quick reply, VDub2174. It's really appreciated.
When you say "general rule of thumb", do you mean that there is a chance that I get to officially update and stay root?
Also, if I'm ready to lose root privilege, is it safe to update the official way or is there a non negligible risk of breaking everything, bricking or whatever?
The point is that I don't have a Windows machine anymore to run Odin (I'm using linux now) and I don't want to spend a long time to re-learn stuff about flashing, etc.
So I'd like to update officially, and do any flashing or rooting only if I really cannot do otherwise.

thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

 

[VDub2174]

If memory serves me correctly, updating patches up the exploit one uses to root so when you update you lose your root access. As for breaking anything, I'm not sure. I haven't read anything where someone messes up their phone by accepting an update but I could be wrong. Every time I root my phones I flash a custom ROM to it so I haven't seen an official update notice in a really long time.

You might wanna look into getting the Moile ODIN app. That's what I used for flashing ROMs to my GSII when I still had it.

 

[handsaway]

Hey, thanks for your reply, VDub.
I found voodoo ota rootkeeper on the store, which unroots you temporarily while you update and let you reroot after.
So I tried the official OTA update. It downloads, then the install begins, but the phone reboots suddenly, and displays "software update failed. Try again with Kies", etc.
I tried both keeping root, and unrooting with the voodoo app.
So I'm gonna try the mobile Odin.

 

[VDub2174]

Hey, thanks for your reply, VDub.
I found voodoo ota rootkeeper on the store, which unroots you temporarily while you update and let you reroot after.
So I tried the official OTA update. It downloads, then the install begins, but the phone reboots suddenly, and displays "software update failed. Try again with Kies", etc.
I tried both keeping root, and unrooting with the voodoo app.
So I'm gonna try the mobile Odin.

No problem

Sometimes it can be weird. I would just flash a Stock JB ROM with Mobile ODIN and that should hopefully stop any update messages from coming through. Like I said, I haven't seen an update message on any of my phones in a long time.....haha