Samsung Galaxy S gets unofficial Android 5.1 firmware

Samsung announced the original Galaxy S smartphone back in March 2010, and the handset launched about three months later, in June. The operating system loaded on it was the now "ancient" Android 2.2 Froyo, but it appears that the hardware is still able to run the latest firmware available from Google, although not an official build as Samsung no longer supports these devices with software updates.

At the end of last week, a post was made on the notorious XDA Forums that is simply entitled "[ROM][5.1][Unofficial OmniROM for Galaxy S I9000 | I9000B]." As its name suggests, this firmware is based on the open source OmniROM project. Although this is only in Alpha development status for now, most Galaxy S users who tried it reported no issues. Considering the age of the handset, this is simply amazing.

The specs of the first-gen Galaxy S are still above today's low-end smartphones in some areas. The handset features a Cortex-A8 single-core processor, PowerVR SGX540 graphics, 512 MB RAM, 8 GB or 16 GB of internal storage with microSD support on top, as well as a 4-inch touchscreen with 800X480 pixels. Unfortunately, the latest official firmware available for this smartphone is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.