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I'm thinking of maybe rooting my phone, for various reasons. But one of the main ones is that I find the current version of Calendar, amongst others, that I have, very lacking. And I'm almost sure the version that comes with Ice Cream Sandwich or later is better. It just has to, seeing all the "what the heck?" things there are in the one I have.

(There's also the fact I need to free my super small phone memory as much as possible, which I'm not allowed to, but this is not what I want to ask about.)

To be clear, I know for sure that my device cannot run full later versions of Android. Clearly, unless you can use an SD card as an extension block of RAM and processor AND install the OS on it, I doubt I can do this. My phone is way too basic.

However, I would like to know if there's a way, through rooting my phone, to get some features of Android 4.0 and up. Such as a better calendar with more features, or the ability to put contacts in groups, for example.

I did look at some third-party calendar software reviews, but none of them seemed to beat the original up-to-date one. Every review seemed to point out things like "calendar app XYZ is great, but X function isn't very compatible with Google Calendar", or "XYZ Google Calendar function doesn't work on it yet", for example.

My phone's specs should be:

  • Samsung Galaxy Q (SGH-T589W)
  • Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread
  • Processor: 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 (if indeed it's the same as the Gravity Smart, because information on the Galaxy Q is rare)
  • Internal storage: 152 MB, some of which I think is taken up by the OS or useless stock software, because I can't ever seem to free it
  • RAM: 279 MB
  • SD card: 2 GB
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If it's mainly the calendar issue: have you checked the playstore for alternatives? There are plenty, even for "small phones". Take e.g. a look at aCalendar, which is pretty nice and runs from 2.1 upwards. – Izzy Jan 10 at 21:33
@Izzy: I haven't tested any, but I've read a lot of comparisons and reviews, and seen a lot of screenshots, but they all seem to have those saddening "buts". – Ariane Jan 10 at 21:51
You will always find "buts", nothing's perfect. What I recommended you sits on top of the pre-installed calendar and adds some useful things. And it's small (~500k -- compared to > 3M for the "big flag ships" like Jorte), and it's free. Give it a try on your own, you alwas can delete it if you don't like it -- all your appointments are stored in the original Google calendar, aCalendar is just a frontend to its database. So you won't lose anything. – Izzy Jan 10 at 21:58
@Izzy all rightie, I will. If it's good, it'll solve one issue, for starters. :p – Ariane Jan 10 at 22:10
Piece by piece :) Good luck! And before it gets lengthy here: You can always meet us in chat. (Almost) no off-topic there ;) – Izzy Jan 11 at 0:14

1 Answer

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Short answer: No!

That would cause the handset to boot-loop or cause F/C (Force Close) as Ice Cream Sandwich and later, their apps are relying on the v4.x framework.

By bringing it across to Gingerbread could spell disaster and "weird" issues with the handset.

However, bringing across Gingerbread 2.3.x apps across to Ice Cream Sandwich should work, (Paradox ahead...) as ICS upwards would have compatibility layer within their framework for running apps that target below ICS! Hope this part makes sense!

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Are there any workarounds? For example, a custom OS that is compatible with some ICS features but has lower technical requirements? Anything? I made a mistake with this awful phone, but given my limited budget, I'd like to tough it out for as long as possible before looking into a more capable one. – Ariane Jan 10 at 19:46
No workarounds! Either look to roll your own ROM with ICS bits back-ported into Gingerbread or look for a custom ICS ROM for your device. FYI - Zte Blade has identical chipset and there's ICS/JB ROM available, just to show that the capability is there by a developer to port it. – t0mm13b Jan 10 at 19:50
Read this XDA Thread someone is bound to have achieved a custom ROM. – t0mm13b Jan 10 at 19:54
Rolling a ROM? What do you mean? Anyway, I ran a long and painful search (I'm awful at searching), and all I found that was interesting-ish was a pre-rooted, pre-unbloated minimalist ROM based on Froyo. This would mean I would literally be downgrading. >_> Sigh. ---Oh, hadn't seen your latest message. I'll take a look. – Ariane Jan 10 at 20:22
Rolling a ROM, means to create your own ROM based off the AOSP source project and build it targetting your device in question, but from reading the XDA thread, it seems there's no love for that device and thus, not interested in modding the handset... – t0mm13b Jan 10 at 20:24
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