Oh kick ass! T-Mo GS-II Jelly Bean update via Kies!

Exciting!  I read via Android Central that T-Mobile's Samsung Galaxy S-II phones could be updated manually through Samsung's Kies software.  And it turns out, there was an announcement yesterday morning, about an optional update to Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean via Kies, on T-Mobile's support forum.  So I hooked up my phone to my computer, flipped Kies on (which required an update itself), and there it was, ready to download.

But, there was a little (or maybe I should say big?) issue here: The update was 768MB.  In other words, this update was going to take a while.  Easily, thirty minutes or more.

But hey, it's all worth it for two things:

• Project Butter makes everything run smooth.
• Google Now is tons more useful on a phone with 4G, than on a tablet with WiFi.

No kidding, Project Butter made an enormously distinctive difference in the phone's operations.

As usual, there are some great add-ons with Samsung's TouchWiz and the month-calendar widget is a huge improvement over the previous version, and then you have your usual boatload of bloatware.

The worst example of bloat: Samsung's Media Hub, on top of T-Mobile's Music Hub, on top of Google Play Music, in addition to the stock music player.  It's not a matter of choice though, because once you pick one, you can't uninstall the others (except Google Play Music).

Some downside: You have to redo a lot of the modifications (widgets, apps on your screens, lock screen background, etc) to get back to your old setup.