Speedmod has probably been one of the most popular and most stable kernels, which was originally developed for use on one of the favorite Android phones of all time, the Samsung Galaxy S, and subsequently its successor, the Samsung Galaxy S2. Needless to say, this kernel was also popular on the variants of these 2 hot selling devices. Speedmod has been developed by XDA dev hardcore, with the core objective of having a kernel which is fast, compatible, stable and offers great battery life, all of which are aspects that were and are collectively desired in the devices that Speedmod was developed for. Hardcore has extended the compatibility of  the Speedmod Kernel yesterday, to include another hot-selling favorite from the Samsung stable, the Galaxy Note. With Speedmod compatibility, the Galaxy Note is about to get a whole new performance b0ost altogether.

Core Features quoted from the developer’s page are as follows:

SpeedMod’s core features are:
– Super stable: No undervolting, overclocking or potentially unstable modifications
– Fast and smooth: Compiler and code optimizations
– Excellent battery life: Remove unecessary logging and debugging

Current features:

Root and CWM:
– Automatically installs root (su)
– CWM recovery

Screen and misc tweaks:
– MDNIE screen sharpness tuning (improves text readability)
– MDNIE color tuning (reduces over-saturation of color)
– init.d, TUN, CIFS, IPV6 Privacy support

Performance:
– CPU governor tweaks: increase responsiveness
– IO tweaks
– Read ahead tweaks
– Updated to jhash3
– Compiled with optimizations using Linaro GCC 4.5 toolchain
– Switched to SLAB instead of SLUB
– GPU base speed increased to 200MHz from 160MHz
– Optimized CPU hotplug
– SCHED_MC multi-core aware scheduler

Turned off unnecessary logging for better smoothness and efficiency:
– Disabled Android Debug Logger / logcat
– Disabled Samsung debug
– Disabled various kernel debugging, statistics and tracing options

Hardcore has been kind enough to provide  us with two versions of the kernel; 1)  Flashable through Odin & 2) Flashable through ClockworkMod recovery or CWM. Download links provided below.

ODIN version- Speedmod Kernel

CWM version- Speedmod Kernel

Disclaimer: The steps and methods included in this guide are considered risky. Please do not attempt to try this unless you know exactly what you are doing, as it may render your device unusable, and your pocket lighter by the amount it takes to replace it. You have been forewarned!!!

Pre-installation  Requirements

For CWM version

  • Rooted Galaxy Note with CWM installed. You can visit this link for a step-by-step video tutorial on how to root and install CWM on the Note.
  • Battery fully charged

For ODIN version

  • Rooted Galaxy Note
  • Battery fully charged
  • All the proper drivers installed. You can get them HERE.
  • Odin v1.85

Irrespective of which version you use, kernel flashing is a risky process, and it is important to have a restore  point to fall back  on, just in case things get messed up. I recommend you perform a full nandroid backup in CWM before you proceed further.

Installation Guide

Odin Version

  1. Switch off your phone and reboot into Download Mode ( Power it back on while holding Volume down, Home button & Power key together)
  2. If you also have Kies on your PC, make sure it is not running. Kies and Odin do not get along very well together.
  3. Connect the phone to PC via USB cable
  4. Launch Odin 1.85.exe on your PC. You should see one com port tab in Odin colored yellow, with a number below it. This means that Odin has recognized your device and is able to communicate with it. It should look like the screenshot below
  5. Now in ODIN, click on PDA and select the “speedmod-kernel-n7000-k1-1-test1-Odin.tar”  file you  downloaded earlier. Leave the other settings at default. Do not change anything. The only check boxes that should be ticked are the PDA box, Auto-Reboot & Reset Time. All other boxes should remain unchecked. The Odin box should look like the screenshot below
  7. Now click Start, to start the kernel flashing process. Do not disconnect your phone or PC at this point. Odin should start flashing the kernel. Once the flash is complete, you should see a green box above the yellow Com Port box, with “Pass” inside it. This means that the kernel flashing is complete and successful. Your phone should automatically reboot.
  8. Disconnect the phone from the PC. Once it has booted, go to Settings–>About Phone and check the kernel version. You should see Speedmod there.  Congratualtions!! You just got your phone a fantastic kernel to run on.

ClockworkMod Version

  1. Download the “speedmod-kernel-n7000-k1-1-test1-CWM.zip” file from the link provided above.
  2. Connect your phone to PC via USB cable, and transfer the downloaded zip file to the root of the internal sd card on your phone
  3. Power off the phone and reboot into recovery ( Volume Up + Home + Power)
  4. Select Install zip from sdcard–> Choose zip from sdcard—> Select the speedmod-kernel-n7000-k1-1-test1-CWM.zip file & confirm installation
  5. Once CWM has finished flashing the Speedmod kernel, go back to the main menu and select Reboot System.
  6. Once the device reboots, go to Settings–>About Phone and check the kernel version. You should see Speedmod there.  Congratulations!! You just got your phone a fantastic kernel to run on.

You can’t go wrong with the Speedmod kernel, so go ahead and give it a whirl, and you’ll see why it has garnered the level of fanfare that it has. In case you have any thoughts, or come across any roadblocks while using the steps above, do give us a shout in comments below, and we’ll be there to help you out.