Samsung recently updated their Galaxy S2 i9100 to the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich. Then, just after a few days, they also released the sources for the kernel which is what all the modders and developers over at XDA were waiting for, as the availability of sources is what makes a lot of improvements and changes possible.

Siyah kernel, one of the most well-known custom kernels for the Galaxy S2 and available for Gingerbread ROMs for quite a while, has been released by XDA developer gokhanmoral for Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) ROMs and firmware as well, thanks to the sources released by Samsung. Siyah kernel has been famous for its improved performance and battery life so quite a few people were waiting anxiously for its ICS version, which is now available as a beta.

Here are the features of the Siyah kernel for ICS (as quoted by the developer):

  • Custom CWM touch recovery with swipe gestures
  • 8 freq steps (100MHz to 1600MHz)
  • Underclock support (we have two interfaces for that. both of them are defacto standard)
  • Tweakable vitalij’s value (set to 5 as default)
  • Fixed fuelalert wakelocks
  • You can disable android logger using ExTweaks app
  • You’ll have lots of options in ExTweaks. Faster charging mode is one of them.
  • Cpu governor optimizations
  • Gpu voltage, clock and stepcount interfaces
  • Tegrak’s touchmove support. you’ll have to tweak it with extweaks and test it with touchmove app until Tegrak adds ICS support to the app.
  • Brightness curve settings with original panel gamma values. panel values unchanged, so you will get stock colors and will be able to use supercurio’s voodoo display app when it is released. brightness modification will only change auto-brightness response.
  • BLN support added but we will need a supporting library. I’ll try to finish this in the weekend.
  • Better touch sensitivity (especially while charging)
  • Added conservative governor and tweaked. recommended for performance.
  • Added lulzactive. may be a bit buggy (maybe not) because I had to make some changes.

As you can see, the list of improvements and features is quite long, which should make long time Siyah kernel fans quite happy as they finally get their favourite kernel for the latest iteration of Android on their Galaxy S2. The kernel is available for download on the official development page on XDA, which you can visit for further information on the kernel. It’s a beta and in the early stages of development, but as the sources are available, the kernel should improve and get better pretty soon.

So go ahead and try the kernel out if you’ve updated your Galaxy S2 to Ice Cream Sandwich, and also check out our guide for updating to the official ICS firmware manually here. Share your thoughts on the kernel and how it works out for you, in the comments below.