How to Silence or Mute Camera Sounds on Sprint Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch Jelly Bean GB27

I have a Galaxy S2 on Ting and recently upgraded to the latest Jelly Bean software. This software update to Jelly Bean 4.1.2 will be the last major upgrade for the Sprint Samsung Galaxy S2. In order to upgrade you have to do so manually, it will NOT be sent OTA to your device, so this is a good time to root as rooting the S2 is about as easy as manually upgrading :)

The camera sounds on the Sprint Galaxy S2 and S3 can be very annoying and very loud if you are in a quiet environment.  This method requires rooting your phone but rooting this device with the stock ROM is extremely easy and adds multiple advantages such as ad blocking, ability to get rid of all the sprint bloatware, and better backup (for example using titanium backup root). 

Please note that this tutorial is for the Sprint Samsung Galaxy S2, but if you have a rooted Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3, the latter section of this post when we start to use the root browser should be the same.

Update: if you do not wish to root your phone, have another device, or want to mute any other sounds, learn how do so with Tasker.

There are plenty of resources our there on how to update to a rooted version of the stock Jelly Bean ROM so I will not go into detail, but will provide links along with the basic steps outlined below:

• As always, backup all your important data to a SD card or your computer before doing anything! 
• Make sure you have the Samsung mobile phone drivers installed for your phone.
• Download the rooted version of the stock ROM (the .exe file) and once it is downloaded right click on it, run as administrator, then extract.
• Open the Odin-OC folder you just extracted and then open the application in that folder named "SPH-D710_GB27_1014481_Rooted_Restore.exe"
• Now grab your Sprint GS2 and turn it off. Then simultaneously hold down the power and volume down buttons. Your phone will ask you if you want to continue by pressing the volume up button, do so, and your phone will enter download mode.
• Plug your phone into your computer via USB and a yellow box should show up in the Odin application (if it doesn't try another USB port and make sure you have the drivers installed). 
• Press "Start" and let it install the rooted Jelly Bean ROM on your phone (it will take a little while).
• If follow the instructions above you shouldn't have any problems, but if you need a more detailed look you can check out this video (ignore his links they are outdated).

Now that you have an updated and rooted phone lets give you the option of turning off those annoying camera sounds. The screenshots are from a Galaxy S2, but should be nearly identical on a Galaxy S3 (if not let me know).

• You will need a file explorer/manager that can obtain root access. Root Browser Lite works and is free, but you can choose any. Download your file explorer app of choice.
• Go to /system/csc/ (shown below)
• Open feature.xml with a text editor (RB Text Editor should be already installed) (shown below)

• Scroll down to the <!-- Camera --!> section
• Find "<CscFeature_Camera_ShutterSoundMenu>false</"
• Change to "false" to "true" (without quotation marks) so that it looks like this:
• <CscFeature_Camera_ShutterSoundMenu>true</ 
• Press "Save" and exit out of the text editor and root browser.
• Restart your phone.

Now when you open the Camera app, click on the gear icon, scroll down to the "Shutter sound" option that has appeared, and turn it off! That should be all. Now you can turn the camera sounds off whenever you want.

I have also written about how to mute the camcorder sounds and mute the startup and shutdown sounds if you are interested.