How to install Jelly Bean on Micromax A110 Canvas 2 and Mobistel Cynus T2

Micromax A110 aka Canvas 2, the show stopper phablet from Micromax that launched last year sprinting on Android v4.0 i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich recently got a Jelly Bean update. Though the update is unofficial, but it is as good as official. Why? Because the update has been released by Mobistel, the company that sells Micromax A110 rebranded as Mobistel Cynus T2 in Germany. Therefore, unlike any custom ROMs, this update is bound to be as smooth and stable as any stock ROM, be it v1 or v2. If you want any custom rom based on Jelly Bean, read this.

Note: Easier method to install and root Jelly Bean on Micromax A110.

The process to flash the ROM is excessively easy. I shall cover that later in the article. The ROM was released yesterday and was a matter of rejoice for all the users of Micromax A110 users who had been waiting for it since ages (well at least months, if not ages.) If you were a regular reader of my blog, you might remember that I had mentioned in one of my previous Micromax A110 articles that a Jelly Bean update might come out in the first week of January. The update somehow got delayed by almost a month, but everyone will forgive Mobistel for that. To our dear Micromax, "We had expected you to come out with an update, too. Hope that you do provide updates to your models in the future."

Download Links:

• Official Download Link from Mobistel
• Jelly Bean Mirror (just in case, the above link stops working, or if you love devhost)

Before you proceed:

• You don’t require a rooted phone. (If you have rooted it, even then there is no problem.)
• As the ROM is not provided by Micromax, it is third party and hence flashing it will void your warranty. You can restore that again, if needed, by flashing stock ROM back.
• Make sure your phone is sufficiently charged. About 50% is recommended. (Though nothing will happen even if you start with 20% but no one would want their phone to get switched off amid the flashing process)
• You don’t need a PC/Laptop if you have a decent internet connection on your mobile, decent enough to download about 250 megabytes of data.

How to Update Micromax A110 Canvas 2 to Jelly Bean:

• Download the rom from the links provided in Downloads section.
• Transfer the rom to your A110’s sdcard.
• If you have installed clockworkmod recovery, you have to flash back stock recovery first. If you aren’t sure whether you have installed clockworkmod recovery or not, then you probably haven’t. Use the image below for reference.

  

  You should have stock recovery either already or after following the next step

• If you have stock recovery, skip this step and directly jump to step #5.
• Download Micromax A110 stock recovery.
• Flash it using MobileUncle MTK Tools. If you can’t understand these steps, read the full guide to flash stock recovery back to your device. (Note: Just do the steps which will flash the stock rom, otherwise you will end up flashing Micromax’s stock ROM, something you won’t want, right?)
• Switch off your mobile. Let it turn off completely.
• Boot into your stock recovery by pressing power button + volume up button + volume down button simultaneously till your screen glows up. Press the Volume Up button in this screen to proceed to the stock recovery.
• In stock recovery, you can use Volume Up to scroll up, Volume Down to scroll down and power button to select an option. Using these controls, scroll to the option “Apply update from sdcard” (or apply update from sdcard2, depending on where you placed the jelly bean zip) and select it.
• Depending on whether you pasted the downloaded rom  in your internal sdcard or external sdcard, select the appropriate location of the file.
• The recovery will start the flashing procedure, let it complete.
• Reboot your device. The first reboot can take as long as 10-15 minutes, be patient.
• Enjoy the Jelly Bean love. And don’t forget to recommend Mobistel to any German friend you have got.
  Note: Your second sim might not work unless you follow the below steps. (This problem is reportedly occurring with some old sim cards.)
• Flash the modem.img from Stock ROM v2 to resolve the second sim issue.  To do that:
• Download modem.img from here.
• Copy the modem.img file to /system/etc/firmware. Change permissions to rw-r--r-- and reboot. (Long pressing on the file will present you the change/manage permissions option, if the file manager supports that.)
• To do the previous step, use root explorer or any other file explorer with root permissions. You need to be rooted to do so. The rooting guide is coming really soon (by tonight). Update: It's here.
• Also, some users had reported that camera quality is really poor in all Jelly Bean based ROMs for Micromax A110. To solve this problem, I have written this guide.

Snapshots:

The Aftermath:

Mr. Gogi from gogi.in had posted the benchmark results for the A110 with original stock rom, and then with the updated Mobistel Jelly Bean rom. He didn't compare the two results, probably leaving that job for me. So, here I am, completing my job.

As you can see, there's a slight difference in every row. In one case, Stock ROM is better and in the other, Jelly Bean wins. So, we can conclude that there won't be much performance difference between these two roms. Though, as expected, RAM usage is considerably more in case of Jelly Bean.

So, I leave it up to you, whether you want to update your A110 or not. 
Just like Stock ROM v2, the amount of internal storage available for apps is about 1.2 GB while 1.05 GB space is available for usage as internal sdcard.

Once you flash the updated Jelly Bean rom, you would loose root access (no matter if you had it or not). You can use the rooting guide for updated Jelly Bean to root your A110 again. Thanks to Mr. Harsh Sharma for emailing me about the happening.