How to Mute Boot and Shutdown Sounds on Rooted Sprint Samsung Galaxy S2 or S3

This guide will show you how to easily mute the startup and shutdown sounds on a rooted Sprint or Ting Samsung Galaxy S2 or S3.

Update: if you do not wish to root your device or want to mute other sounds, learn how to silence any sounds on any device with Tasker.

This is a very easy fix if you have already rooted your phone. If you have not yet rooted, I would highly recommend it as you can root the stock roms very easily. I am not going to cover rooting in this post as it is extensively covered by many other people - just google "how to root [your phone] [your software version]" and you will find all the information you need. See the beginning of this post for brief instructions how to root the latest (and final) release for the Sprint Galaxy S2.

So, now that your phone is already rooted, this is the by far the best method to mute the boot up and power down sounds. The screenshots shown below were taken with a Galaxy S2, but should be nearly identical with the Galaxy S3 (let me know if they are different). 

First, if you do not already have some sort of root file browser, download one - I am using root browser lite in this tutorial - but anything that can change file permission will work fine. 

Now open root browser and navigate to system → media → audio → ui as shown below: 

Now find PowerOff.wav and PowerOn.ogg as shown below:

Long press on PowerOff.wav and then select "Permissions." Once you have selected permissions, UN-check all of the permissions as shown below and press OK. The first time you do this your phone will ask if its okay for the app to have root privileges - grant them, and it won't bother you any more. 

Repeat this process for PowerOn.ogg, again turning off all of the permissions. Once you have turned off all the permissions the PowerOff and PowerOn files should look like this with no read or write permissions:

That is it! No more annoying boot and shutdown sounds on the rooted stock ROM.

If you would like to learn more about silencing the Sprint Galaxy S2, I wrote posts on how to silence the camera and video camera as well.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 & HTC One Are Now Available at Ting

Some new developments at Ting, my new favorite mobile phone provider, that are pretty exciting.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One are now officially supported and available to buy from the Ting device page. As of now devices "are shipping in 2-3 weeks." The Samsung Galaxy S4 costs $596 and the HTC One costs $536. If you are new to Ting, or would like to learn more about it, check out my in-depth review.

You may also buy Sprint versions of these phones and activate them on the Ting network since the bring your own device program now includes LTE devices.

Because Ting is a no-contract carrier, the phones are somewhat expensive new, but if you look around on eBay or other places, you can find these devices for cheaper, especially if don't mind buying a used device.

The iPhone has made its way to the Ting device page as well - you can sign up to be notified when Ting offers the iPhone, but there is no specific time-frame for when it will be available. Update: you can get the iPhone 4, 4s and 5 now. To stay up to date you can follow this or the Ting Blog for more information.

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