Cyanogenmod on the Samsung Galaxy S wifi 5 (Samsung Galaxy Player 5)

I had the chance to buy a Samsung Galaxy S wifi 5: It's not a phone, it 's not a tablet, it's something in between. I got a special price ;-) so I could buy it just to mess with it. If I break it, so be it.

Of course, I wanted to replace the default firmware by a clean system: CyanogenMod. Unfortunately, there is no official CyanogenMod version for this device. I thought there was, but I was confused. There are a lot of devices called 'Samsung Galaxy S', and they all use incompatible hardware. So the installation was a little harder than I expected.

Replace the recovery image

I found this very useful walkthrough to replace the recovery image:

• How to root and install ClockWorkMod recovery on Galaxy Player 5.0

I did install the Samsung USB drivers for mobile phones on beforehand, I am not sure this was necessary, but it is likely it is. (Remember: I am clueless, as always.)

If you went throught the steps, you can boot into the ClockWorkMod recovery by pressing the volume-up button while turning on the device.

Download and flash the images for CM9

I found a lot of ROMS for the Samsung Galaxy Player on theunlockr.com. I picked 'CM9 for Galaxy Player 5.0 ROM' (because I am not in the USA), and I followed the links to

• CM9 for Galaxy Player 5.0 INTL, USA and KOR devices.

Download the stable version. Which I did not notice, because the link was in red. Probably to draw the attention. Which did not work for me :-). I first installed an old version, so I lost a lot of time.

The extra's seem to be useful as well. I installed all of them. For the GApps, I took the most recent for ics (gapps-ics-20120429-signed.zip), and for the 'home fix for INTL users', I took version 2.

I put all the zips on the sd-card. I rebooted into recovery, created a backup, and installed all images. (Cyanogenmod first, then all the rest.) Factory reset, clear cache, reboot, done.

What does not work:

• Camera

• Transferring files via USB from/to the sd-card.

• The hardware button in the middle under the screen doesn't seem to do anything.

• Installing apps on the SD-card.

Other versions?

There is a thread about CM10 on the xda-developers forum, but this does not work, and development on this version seems to have stopped.

There is a ROM for CM7 as well. Maybe with a working camera. I still have to try this out.

About the SD-card problems

There are some issues with the SD-card, but I im unsure which ones.

Some apps (like e.g. Mustard) want to install on the SD-card. So the installation from the market fails.

If you remount / as rw, using the terminal: `` mount -o rw,remount /``

installation works, and the apps run. That is, until you reboot the device. Then the app is 'not found' when you try to run it.

Another problem: if you now open the 'app management' screen, the system crashes after a few seconds.

To install Mustard, I did the following:

• remount / as rw

• install mustard

• open app management, show the apps on SD-card, and uncheck mustard. I had to be very quick, before the crash.