AOSP based Android 5.0 Lollipop ROMs are making their way to several Android devices, we first covered one for the Nexus 4 and since then Android 5.0 Lollipop ROM has seen development in some of the Xperia devices and now the development has begun for the Galaxy S3 as well.
Samsung Galaxy S3 was originally launched with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and was officially supported by Samsung till Android 4.3 Jelly Bean only. The international variant of the device never saw the Android 4.4 kitkat update officially from Samsung, however, the carrier branded AT&T and Verizon variant of Galaxy S3 did receive the official KitKat update.
Samsung never officially rolled out the Android 4.4 KitKat update for Galaxy s3 so that confirms that you’ll not see any official update for Android 5.0 Lollipop for the Galaxy S3 from Samsung. Your hope for getting Lollipop on your S3 is only going to be fulfilled byt the means of AOSP based custom ROMs.
AOSP stands for Android Open Source Project where Google provides source code for latest Android versions. The source code for the Android 5.0 Lollipop was submitted to the AOSP on November 3, 2014. Independent developers uses this source code to develop custom ROMs for various devices, and thus bringing latest Android updates to devices which manufacturers stop supporting officially.
Don’t be mistaken though by the notion that manufacturers stop supporting a device because a device isn’t capable of running latest Android versions. It’s a wrong assumption for 95% cases. Device manufacturers introduces new devices every year and if they keep on supporting (read: updating) any older device, they hit sales on their newer devices. Which is a loss for the manufacturer. And also, specifically in the world of Android, these manufacturers pointlessly overburden their work by developing a custom skin over stock Android’s UI, which further hurts a device performance.
From hardware standpoint, Android 5.0 Lollipop can run just as well as Jellybean did on the Galaxy S3, and we’d even go ahead to say that any Android devices released since 2011 with 1GB RAM and a dual-core processor is capable of running Android 5.0 Lollipop smoothly. We already saw Galaxy Nexus running Android 5.0 Lollipop smoothly, and it’s even older than the Galaxy S3.
So we know that Galaxy S3 can handle Android 5.0 easily, and the development of an Android 5.0 ROM for the Galaxy S3 has also begun. However, as it’s the case with early releases, the Galaxy S3 Android 5.0 ROM too is very buggy at this time. Almost everything isn’t working on the ROM, except for the fact that it’s booting and gets you the Lollipop flavor on your good ol’ device.
The developer of the ROM is arter97, and he has stated that the ROM will be supported by all Galaxy S3 variants that are supported by his kernel “arter97”.
As for the bugs, we hope arter97 is able to fix them himself. If not, our best bet would be CM12. CM12 isn’t officially announced yet, but it’ll be the 12th version of popular CyanogenMod ROM based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. CM too is an AOSP based ROM and has been on Android for more than 5 years now. However, it’s another thing that it’s going to take another month or two for CM12 to be released.
All that said, if you’re interested in installing the Android 5.0 Lollipop on your Galaxy S3, head over to the development page linked below. And while you’re there, be sure to say your thanks to the dev (arter97) and also support him with some donation to inspire him to get Android 5.0 Lollipop on the Galaxy S3 as quick as he can.
Galaxy S3 Android 5.0 Lollipop development page link →
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