Yummy Ice Cream Sandwich?

Those of you who are using Androids would definitely know what the above title means. Everybody have been waiting for it to arrive and when it does, its a frantic manic dash to get it into your device. My device behaved strangely from the first day I got it. Many people would blame that its a I9100G issue but I just want my smartphone to be functioning properly without the stupid talk about its hardware and supposedly inferior quality to its cousin.

I must admit that I would love to see an improvement to my device by upgrading to ICS. Interestingly, I did see a difference and its much smoother than any of the roms I used before. As mentioned, its a manic dash and I could not wait for Malaysian version to be released, I flashed the Indian version and it worked perfectly. To my dismay, the Malaysian version was released the very next day I flashed the Indian one =_="

So being a faithful citizen, I wanted to stay true to my country by flashing to the Malaysian version. I tried it this morning and the weird thing was that it failed! @_@" I was like, I'm fucked ... The phone can't get into download mode, I'm really screwed ...

I was stuck on a screen with the logo phone-warning sign-PC and the supposed way of plugging in a USB jig would bring you to download mode also did not work and its just stuck at that screen. I was sweating although it was quite cold in office today. I could not find a solution which actually tells me what to do exactly so I experimented. I hope my listed steps can hopefully recover your phone too. Btw, don't panic just yet and try out what I did :)

In XDA-developers, it was informed that if you got this error with ICS, you are quiet screwed and not to mention stuck with pretty much no idea how to proceed. I read somewhere that you need to re-partition your phone because something screwed up (duh!) during flashing. This means that your phone does not have a rom to boot to or something is missing to allow you to continue to recovery mode.

With that understanding, I checked back my PC on what I have. Thankfully I have :

a) Odin
b) A working pit file
c) An old sure working official Samsung rom.

With that, I started my journey back to ICS :

1) Fire up Odin, plug in your phone and pray that you get the yellow box ie phone detected despite NOT being in download mode.
2) Select pit file and PDA as the rom. I think the pit and the rom MUST be compatible with each other. You don't want to screw up any further.
3) With the default selections, press Start and start praying! To my surprise the update progress bar was moving along like it was in download mode!
4) If all goes well, you should get a pass on Odin and your phone will be rebooted into the old rom.
5) Amen. Your phone is breathing again, now to get it back to terms with the rest of the world.
6) I went into download mode again and flashed the Indian ICS
7) Based on my previous experience, its best to reset to factory
8) This part is optional BUT I wanted to restore all my apps from Titanium Backup so I rooted my phone. Unfortunately for me, the non-counter increasing method does not work because somehow the CWM just does not work after it replaced the default version.
9) After half a morning of sweating and praying, my phone is back to ICS and I'm restoring my apps just in time for lunch =D

For my fellow I9100G users, I hope you will not encounter what I went through. If you did, you can try the above and I wish you a speedy recovery.

p/s : Damn Samsung removed the more flexible ICS lockscreen BUT that is easily rectified by installing other launchers which allows lockscreen customization.