Database Users

[Q] Clarification Needed

Hey guys. GOt my AT&T s4 here. first one i got couple weeks ago got the MK2 OTA and downloaded just fine, never got TWRP thru GooManager or CWM thru ROM Manager to work n install a recovery. SafeStrap is the only thing i had gotten working. Phone ended up getting wet, switched the board inside with that from a slightly older s4. this one came with the MDL firmware. However this time TWRP thru GooManager worked. So i installed couple other recoveries that wouldnt work before, one with Auto-Loki feature and the other was SafeStrap. With SafeStrap i installed two versions of CM11, none of which got beyond a black screen. Also i have little to no signal since dealing with MDL. Tried to update to MK2, but this time i get a reboot 2 my custom recovery followed by Status 7 error. I am interested in trying out a CM11 ROM, as well as maybe one or two TouchWiz ROMS. Mainly CM, really love the Torch app. What do i need 2 do in general to accomplish this? Ive got ODIN, pretty sufficient experience rooting and modding phones,so not a completely dummy here. Was wondering if i maybe needed to flash a kernel to get those CM ROMS working. any guidance is extremely appreciated.

You were trying to use SS. If you would read, you would know that only 4.2.2 TW and GPE ROMs work with SS unless you have the latest SS, but then again no AOSP, AOSP, CM or MIUI will work. Since the new board is able to have a custom recovery because it is pre MF3, use that to flash those types of ROMs .the error 7 is because you tried to OTA update with a custom recovery. Can't do it.
You say you are not a noob, but I disagree. Every concern you have mentioned is on the first page of both the QA section and general section. Read before you brick.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

Flash ROM & some crazy nintendo graphics

Hi guys, I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on a few things for me.
I have an ATT SGH i-337 MK2 with SafeStrap 3.71
Today I tried to flash PAC ROM and Dirty Unicorn into ROM Slot-1, and upon reboot when the ROM's logo should appear the whole screen just looked like when a nintendo cartridge isn't working. It was just a few crazy colors with some blocks and lines here and there.
Then I tried AOKP with it's Loki'd Kernel being part of the ROM. The nintendo screen came back again, but then the AOKP logo popped up clear as day for a second. Then went back to the lines and colors.
So could this be a problem with Safestrap compatibility? If so, how can I uninstall it? (I did read the dev's thread, and it just says use .APK and IDK what that means)
Or could it be that I also need to use Loki Doki with the other two? (Didn't see anything about that in PAC or DU threads)
Thanks!

Same issues apon using The Samsung Galaxy S4 for Verizon (jfltevzw) Build MK2 rooted using vRoot (English) and using safestrap. if needed I can upload the safestrap apk or version. If I install any type of AOSP ROM the boot logo is either missng or baby blue with wierd static lines. AOKP is the only AOSP ROM that eventually boots (with static boot logo) but no wireless works, and this is the same wether MK2 and/or MJ7 modules are installed or not. the only rom I can successfuly install and use daily that has no bootloader based issues is Hyperdrive ROM For jfltevzw & jflteatt. Any info would be much apreciated!
Sent from my SCH-I545 using xda app-developers app

^ Interesting. I didn't expect anyone else to have this issue. I never read about it before. I really feel like it has something to do with SafeStrap.

Heath Cliff said:
Hi guys, I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on a few things for me.
I have an ATT SGH i-337 MK2 with SafeStrap 3.71
Today I tried to flash PAC ROM and Dirty Unicorn into ROM Slot-1, and upon reboot when the ROM's logo should appear the whole screen just looked like when a nintendo cartridge isn't working. It was just a few crazy colors with some blocks and lines here and there.
Then I tried AOKP with it's Loki'd Kernel being part of the ROM. The nintendo screen came back again, but then the AOKP logo popped up clear as day for a second. Then went back to the lines and colors.
So could this be a problem with Safestrap compatibility? If so, how can I uninstall it? (I did read the dev's thread, and it just says use .APK and IDK what that means)
Or could it be that I also need to use Loki Doki with the other two? (Didn't see anything about that in PAC or DU threads)
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you would have read 1st, then you would know that you can NOT flash any non TW rom on MK2. This is stated over & over on XDA. Safestrap is NOT the problem it is a Godsend from Hashcode for us to be able to flash custom roms onto our locked boot loader devices. Please read before flashing, bricking & then bashing the developers. Follow the directions posted on how to restore your phone, or better yet make a trip to Best Buy & they'll do it for you. Good Luck.

REEEEEEAAAAADDDD!!!!
It's been very well documented that AOSP does not work with safestrap. Neither does loki. There currently is no way/fix to flash AOSP.
So
1. No AOSP or GPE
2. No loki
3. No flashing custom kernels
Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

John The Rhino said:
If you would have read 1st, then you would know that you can NOT flash any non TW rom on MK2. This is stated over & over on XDA. Safestrap is NOT the problem it is a Godsend from Hashcode for us to be able to flash custom roms onto our locked boot loader devices. Please read before flashing, bricking & then bashing the developers. Follow the directions posted on how to restore your phone, or better yet make a trip to Best Buy & they'll do it for you. Good Luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did read first. I've been reading this forum for quite a while actually. But there is so much information it's hard to keep it all straight. This ATT stuff is a lot different then my VZW Razr was. That phone was just flash and forget. There are so many different ROM's for this phone now that are 4.3 or KitKat I guess I just didn't realize that, that Android version came with the ROM and was originally something more mod-able stock.
Any way I wasn't bashing SS or Hashcode. I clearly said "compatibility issue" i.e. some programs just don't play well together hence the existence of compatibility mode, virtual machines, and x86 processors. So maybe you should read before bashing novice community members and making yourself look like a big asshole.
And I don't need best buy to fix anything I have a NANDroid, backup on Kies3, and Google+. Besides, I did all of this flashing I on a separate partition so the stock ROM was never altered. Thanks for absolutely nothing at all.
For anyone else that feels like they can move on with me, I would really like to try to install TWRP in place of SS. I'd appreciate any help with how to go about doing that. TIA

Heath Cliff said:
I did read first. I've been reading this forum for quite a while actually. But there is so much information it's hard to keep it all straight. This ATT stuff is a lot different then my VZW Razr was. That phone was just flash and forget. There are so many different ROM's for this phone now that are 4.3 or KitKat I guess I just didn't realize that, that Android version came with the ROM and was originally something more mod-able stock.
Any way I wasn't bashing SS or Hashcode. I clearly said "compatibility issue" i.e. some programs just don't play well together hence the existence of compatibility mode, virtual machines, and x86 processors. So maybe you should read before bashing novice community members and making yourself look like a big asshole.
And I don't need best buy to fix anything I have a NANDroid, backup on Kies3, and Google+. Besides, I did all of this flashing I on a separate partition so the stock ROM was never altered. Thanks for absolutely nothing at all.
For anyone else that feels like they can move on with me, I would really like to try to install TWRP in place of SS. I'd appreciate any help with how to go about doing that. TIA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well stating Safestrap may have a compatibility issue is offensive to the developer, especially since you did not read the instructions or posts from other members who did as you. If you would follow the directions it's perfect. I have 4 different roms on my phone + stock to choose from! How cool is that? I understand the overwhelming urge to flash a rom, as I too have been flashing on my Skyrocket since the factory warranty expired last year, and flashing roms is a breeze on that device. However, this S4 is more complicated since the introduction of the KNOX & the LOCKED boot loader. These phones are expensive so unless you really want a $700.00 brick, read, read some more, then read it all again. Safestrap uses TWRP to flash the roms, but TWRP alone is not compatible with MK2 nor is CWM. If you want to flash roms on your ATT MK2 S4 Safestrap is the only way to do that at this writing.

John The Rhino said:
Well stating Safestrap may have a compatibility issue is offensive to the developer, especially since you did not read the instructions or posts from other members who did as you. If you would follow the directions it's perfect. I have 4 different roms on my phone + stock to choose from! How cool is that? I understand the overwhelming urge to flash a rom, as I too have been flashing on my Skyrocket since the factory warranty expired last year, and flashing roms is a breeze on that device. However, this S4 is more complicated since the introduction of the KNOX & the LOCKED boot loader. These phones are expensive so unless you really want a $700.00 brick, read, read some more, then read it all again. Safestrap uses TWRP to flash the roms, but TWRP alone is not compatible with MK2 nor is CWM. If you want to flash roms on your ATT MK2 S4 Safestrap is the only way to do that at this writing.
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Click to collapse
Okay, well thank you for that. I just see so many ATT S4's in here with other ROMs and Recoverys I thought I could get something to happen. Anyway, sorry for the poor thread and response. I appreciate the plain blunt fact that SS and the ROMs that work with it are my choices for now. And don't worry about me. The worst that I'd probably get is a soft brick and I've recovered from that before Thanks again

Heath Cliff said:
Okay, well thank you for that. I just see so many ATT S4's in here with other ROMs and Recoverys I thought I could get something to happen. Anyway, sorry for the poor thread and response. I appreciate the plain blunt fact that SS and the ROMs that work with it are my choices for now. And don't worry about me. The worst that I'd probably get is a soft brick and I've recovered from that before Thanks again
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Click to collapse
Hey man I totally understand. It's hard to watch all these other roms pop up for the original S4 & we can't flash them. But we no longer have to suffer with only the stock rom option since Hashcode's brilliant Safestrap was released. Once you get use to it, the ability of being able to multi-boot roms really kind of makes up for the locked boot loader. Soon though, we will have 4.4 Kit Kat & then we can start this process of getting off the stock rom all over again. Right? It could be worse, we could have I-phones. We do have a ever growing number of great custom TW based roms available to us here for our device. So try them, you'll be surprised how much better your phone performs. Glad I made sense & forgive my bluntness that's just how us Rhinos roll.

[Q] Trying to get a rom for MF3

Hi guys, fairly new to Android, been an iPhone user for a very long time. Didn't like it, but they were always JB. I got the S4 and was hoping to get it in a custom rom since all this AT&T jargon is annoying. Not to mention the slow stock apps and useless apps.
Heres my phone specs.
ANDROID VERSION: 4.2.2
MODEL: SAMSUNG-SGH-I337
BASE BAND VERSION: I337UCUAMF3
BUILD NUMBER: JDQ39.I337UCUAMF3
It's an MF3 to the max I believe. And as far as I have seen, there is no option for it using any AOSP roms or any roms that use the 4.4. roms.
I may be wrong and was wondering what my options are for custom roms? I would like to go cyagen or google, but it seems I may be out of luck with either. I can't find help on the forums since most people claim they got a rom, while many others claim its impossible, while others have bricked phones. I dont even know which recover to use.
My phone is rooted, I have clockwork.

aermis said:
Hi guys, fairly new to Android, been an iPhone user for a very long time. Didn't like it, but they were always JB. I got the S4 and was hoping to get it in a custom rom since all this AT&T jargon is annoying. Not to mention the slow stock apps and useless apps.
Heres my phone specs.
ANDROID VERSION: 4.2.2
MODEL: SAMSUNG-SGH-I337
BASE BAND VERSION: I337UCUAMF3
BUILD NUMBER: JDQ39.I337UCUAMF3
It's an MF3 to the max I believe. And as far as I have seen, there is no option for it using any AOSP roms or any roms that use the 4.4. roms.
I may be wrong and was wondering what my options are for custom roms? I would like to go cyagen or google, but it seems I may be out of luck with either. I can't find help on the forums since most people claim they got a rom, while many others claim its impossible, while others have bricked phones. I dont even know which recover to use.
My phone is rooted, I have clockwork.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unless you can boot into clockwork, you don't have it. Chances are your recovery is broken at the moment. Your only option on MF3 is to use Safestrap, and if you stay on MF3 then you can use a 4.2.2 Google Edition ROM but that's the most you'll get besides other touchwiz. Otherwise, if you do have clockwork then you're either still on MDL with an MF3 ROM or on a different model. There's plenty of threads with information.

DeadlySin9 said:
Unless you can boot into clockwork, you don't have it. Chances are your recovery is broken at the moment. Your only option on MF3 is to use Safestrap, and if you stay on MF3 then you can use a 4.2.2 Google Edition ROM but that's the most you'll get besides other touchwiz. Otherwise, if you do have clockwork then you're either still on MDL with an MF3 ROM or on a different model. There's plenty of threads with information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome. Thank you for the information. You may be right with the Clockwork being broken. I do get into the boot load but I don't think I got a recovery. OK so my best options are a 4.2.2 google edition rom. How about with cyogen? If you can point me to the proper forums I'd gladly stop annoying you lol. I'm sorry for being difficult. It's hard for me to dig for information correctly.

Keep Digging. You have a lot to learn. Read up on what you can and can not do on mf3. Look for safestrap

Mf3 shostock v2.3 was good... Try rooted stock with the wanam clean up w.e apps you don't need... Regardless its only TW and I'm holding off updating faithfully
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

you won't be able to use cyanogen, it's aosp
and you will have to use the recovery that comes with safestrap--no custom recoveries or kernels
you can, i believe update to mk2 and with latest Safestrap 3.7? and use 4.3 roms. not expert on SafeStrap as I don't need it, so not 100% on that
first step is getting recovery back

Everyone thanks a lot for the replies. I will look into all that was said and see what my best options are. Whether to update to mk2 and get 4.3 roms but risk the update or keep mf3 and hope for some custom recoveries.

[Q] Help with ROMs on AT&T Galaxy S4

I feel like I've spent two whole days downloading and flashing stuff on my phone, and to no avail, nothing has worked. In your opinion, what's the best way to get _________ ROM on your AT&T Galaxy S4? I'm currently downgrading from NB1 to MK2 because I thought it'd be easier, but I thought I should ask everyone else first. I'd honestly just like to get Cyanogen Mod on my phone and call it a day, so what would be the easiest way to go about it?
Edit: I can root my phone just fine, but I'm basically asking for what version my phone should have as well as the easiest procedure to get me a custom ROM on my phone.

Currently there is no way to install AOSP/AOKP ROMs. The ROMs that can be installed are listed in the all things att thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2616221

jmjoyas said:
Currently there is no way to install AOSP/AOKP ROMs. The ROMs that can be installed are listed in the all things att thread
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2616221
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
^^^this.
You can only use safestrap recovery and safestrap compatible roms
tapatalked from my california Chrome custom at&t s4

[Q] Phone refuses to boot with a rom

Hi, I've been trying to install a custom rom (at this point ANY custom rom) on my friend's phone. I have worked on several phones before, including my own sprint GS3, but this is my first time trying to work around a locked bootloader, and BOY is it a pain, haha. I'm no dev, but I would like to think that I'm pretty competent.
First a few things to note, are that the phone is currently on NI1 (Been too much of a sissy to go to NJ4 in case it screws something up, I don't even know why), it is the 16Gb version, I am using an external sd card to flash everything, and yes I am flashing loki-doki after everything.
So what I've done so far is:
- Try to install TWRP
- Find out that won't work and finally figure out I need safestrap
- Successfully install safestrap after using towelroot by ODIN-ing the NC1 kernel then going back to the NI1 kernel
- Try to flash Resurrection Remix and KToonsez kernel using a new rom-slot, and wind up soft-bricking (stuck on bootloader screen, can get to download mode)
- ODIN NB1 tar then ODIN NI1 update
- Repeat the last few steps several times because I'm too idiotic to realize that it JUST ISN'T GOING TO WORK!
- Finally find a reference to flashing the ATT kernel modules after the rom. That got me past the soft brick and safestrap screen, but I don't even see a boot animation
As of right now my sequence to successfully not soft-bricking (what an accomplishment) is to flash the rom>gapps>ATT kernel module>supersu>loki-doki>wipe dalvik/cache
Now, is it worth it having already spend a good 7 hours, just to get a custom rom? Of course not, it's not my phone and my friend isn't picky. He'd be just fine with rooted TW. However, It kills me that I don't know what's going on, so here I am lol.
TL;DR: Phone has safestrap, is rooted, but any time I flash a rom it gets past the boot loader/safestrap screen and never shows a boot animation, or anything past that. Can anyone help figure out what's going on please?
Thanks in advance.

You can only flash touch wiz based roms with safestrap and you can't flash kernels with safestrap. That's been your problem with soft bricking.
Edit, see this for roms you can flash http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=53758227
Sent from my Nexus 9 using XDA Free mobile app

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2616221

Thanks guys. I thought I read through the whole thread, but there is so much information, it's pretty scattered, I must have missed the thing about only TW roms working.
Now a few more questions:
1) Is it worth updating to NJ4? The phone is new and doesn't have any app data or anything that would be missed by updating. I see quite a few roms in 4.4.4, but it looks like most of them are AOSP based, which leads me to my next question...
2) Is there a way to get AOSP roms to work? I see all of these AOSP based roms, obviously for this phone, but it would be pointless to make them if they don't work.

Masterjuggler said:
Thanks guys. I thought I read through the whole thread, but there is so much information, it's pretty scattered, I must have missed the thing about only TW roms working.
Now a few more questions:
1) Is it worth updating to NJ4? The phone is new and doesn't have any app data or anything that would be missed by updating. I see quite a few roms in 4.4.4, but it looks like most of them are AOSP based, which leads me to my next question...
2) Is there a way to get AOSP roms to work? I see all of these AOSP based roms, obviously for this phone, but it would be pointless to make them if they don't work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It wouldn't hurt to update to nj4. But it's not going to help you either. Only phones on mdb or mdl bootloader can flash non touch wiz based roms using loki. And you can't go back to those bootloaders
Sent from my Nexus 9 using XDA Free mobile app

Alright then. Hyperdrive looks pretty good, I'll try that along with Ktoonsez kernel. I'll report back later to let you know how it goes. Thanks again!

Masterjuggler said:
Alright then. Hyperdrive looks pretty good, I'll try that along with Ktoonsez kernel. I'll report back later to let you know how it goes. Thanks again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again, you can't flash a kernel in safestrap
Sent from my Nexus 9 using XDA Free mobile app

Oh, I get it now. That didn't quite register before. So just to confirm, after I flash the rom (which already has its own custom kernel included), I still need to flash the stock ATT kernel, correct?

Flash the rom, super su, and the att module for your base. Hyperdrive is a very good rom, good luck. Also the rom doesn't include a kernel, your original kernel stays put. That's why only tw roms work, because your new rom has to be compatible with the kernel already on your phone.

Just reporting in, I now have the phone up and running using Hyperdrive Rom. Thanks for the help!
I actually had a problem where it would not shut down correctly, but found out it was because I was installing the rom in a rom-slot in safestrap. As soon as I tried the stock rom slot, it worked flawlessly.