With the CyanogenMod team pushing CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) onto as many devices as possible, it was only expected that the Samsung Epic 4G gets its share of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Because this is still an alpha release, there are bugs that need to be addressed. The bugs are not major problems though–just tiny snags such as the camera crashing when you change the picture size, video recording sometimes showing artifacts, and MMS sometimes being unreliable. Since this is an official release by the CyanogenMod team at the helm, it’s only a matter of time before a more stable build will be released.

Despite its bugs, CM9 has several working functions, such as:

• Phone calls
• Sending and receiving SMS
• Sending and receiving MMS
• Hardware 3D acceleration
• 3G Data
• 4G WiMax
• Wi-Fi
• USB mass storage
• Camera and video recording (with some problems)
• Google Apps (gapps-ics-20111230.zip has been confirmed to work)

If the functioning features outweigh the bugs for you, and you’d really like to apply this update on your Samsung Epic 4G, we’d like to remind everyone that this should not be applied to an incompatible device. This ROM should only be applied to the Samsung Epic 4G. There’s no telling what can happen if you try to install this on other devices. You can check your device model throughstyle=”font-style: italic;”>Settings > About device.

Requirements

You’ll need a few things before updating:

• Rooted Samsung Epic 4G, with ClockworkMod Recovery installed.
• Make a back up of your data as it may be lost during the update process.
• Make sure your device’s battery is fully charged to prevent it from shutting off in the middle of the update process.
• CM9 Alpha package. Mirror 1 | Mirror 2
• Google Apps (gApps) package for CM9. Mirror 1 | Mirror 2

Installation Instructions

Once you have everything, you may now proceed to installing CM9 on your Samsung Epic 4G:

1. Download the CM9 Alpha and the gApps ZIP package files onto your PC.
2. Connect your phone to your computer.
3. Copy both the CM9 Alpha and the gApps ZIP files into the root of your device’s SD card.
4. Power off your phone.
5. Boot into Recovery Mode.
6. Select “Wipe Data/Factory Reset”.
7. Select “Wipe Cache Partition”.
8. Select “Wipe Dalvik Cache”.
9. Once the full wipe has been completed, navigate to “Install Zip from SD Card”.
10. Choose the CM9 Alpha zip file.
11. Once the CM9 Alpha zip file has finished flashing, navigate back to “Install Zip from SD Card” and this time choose the gApps ZIP file.
12. After gApps has finished flashing, select “Go Back”.
13. Select “Reboot System Now”.

After your phone reboots, your Samsung Epic 4G will now be running the epic Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with CyanogenMod 9.