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Say you have an unlocked AT & T phone, but are using it on T-Mobile.  Would you upgrade to KitKat via At&T or T-Mobile?  Should I just wait until it shows up on Kies, I guess?

I'm almost positive you would upgrade to KK on TMO. I'm not 100% sure because I've never been in a position to try that myself and it's kinda a weird thing to Google and get a proper search result.

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Yes, i have to have my S3 constantly pluuged in or it will die in a few hours. That really sucked when i was on vacation and i needed my gpS to get back to my hotel.

That was my beef with my S2.  I had to buy an extended battery just to mostly get through the day, even without GPS.

 

Now I have an LG G2 and it held up for full days in Hawaii on GPS without charging.

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Yes, i have to have my S3 constantly pluuged in or it will die in a few hours. That really sucked when i was on vacation and i needed my gpS to get back to my hotel.

That's what happened to me, its the bloat Samsung has on it.  Rooting mine solved the problem.

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I just got a Nexus 5. I'm blown away by how snappy everything is coming from an S4.

One of the best phones on the market and easily the best value.

 

Indeed.  My only beef is that I bought the red and it's more of a neon orange.  The phone itself is dead sexy, though.

 

Do you have a case on yours?  It didn't seem like there were a ton of options so I ordered a cheap Spigen.

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I just got a Nexus 5. I'm blown away by how snappy everything is coming from an S4.

One of the best phones on the market and easily the best value.

Indeed.  My only beef is that I bought the red and it's more of a neon orange.  The phone itself is dead sexy, though.

 

Do you have a case on yours?  It didn't seem like there were a ton of options so I ordered a cheap Spigen.

I do, it's a Spigen neo hybrid. It's a really good case. I typically go no case but I cracked the screen on mine so after I replaced the screen i put it in a case. If you go no case and don't like the red, check out dbrand skins. They are awesome. I had one on mine for a long time and it looked like it came from the factory that way.

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I didn't brick my phone, but everything looks pretty much the same? I'm guessing because I used the Samsung thing instead-of the vanilla Android? Lame. I was looking forward to the new phone app.

If you updated through Samsung (whether it be through Kies or through the system update on your phone), it's gonna be Samsung/TouchWiz's version of KitKat. Even on vanilla Android, KitKat doesn't look that much different from Jelly Bean.

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I upgraded with the "official" OTA Touchwiz ROM someone captured specifically for my weirdo model number (SGH-1337) after the other ROM I tried failed to do anything.

 

I just want the cool looking phone app that's in all the reviews. :/

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If you haven't heard of it, I strongly suggest looking into the "One" phone by OnePlus.  High-spec 5.5" Android phone for $300 w/no contract...

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I just got a Nexus 5. I'm blown away by how snappy everything is coming from an S4.

One of the best phones on the market and easily the best value.

Indeed.  My only beef is that I bought the red and it's more of a neon orange.  The phone itself is dead sexy, though.

 

Do you have a case on yours?  It didn't seem like there were a ton of options so I ordered a cheap Spigen.

I do, it's a Spigen neo hybrid. It's a really good case. I typically go no case but I cracked the screen on mine so after I replaced the screen i put it in a case. If you go no case and don't like the red, check out dbrand skins. They are awesome. I had one on mine for a long time and it looked like it came from the factory that way.

 

 

Those skins are super sexy; I'd be way down for covering my phone in Jayhawk colors.  Unfortunately, I'm way too clumsy to roll caseless.

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I did it for years. Never had a problem, never cracked my screen or anything. Until one day I get out of the truck and didn't realize the phone was in my lap and straight down on the driveway it goes. Screen cost was $130. So its in a case now lol.

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OK, so I git the semi-official OTA ROM the other day, but I couldn't help but lust after the ROM Petey linked, so I downloaded it and tried to flash it as I had the other one, but I keep getting errors :"footer is wrong" and "verification is wrong"

 

So I re-downloaded it thinking perhaps it hadn't finished, and got the same errors, so I started trying all sorts of different ROMS, all with the same results, so I download Odin, but I can't find any of the required files in the zips I downloaded, so I gave up there and found ANOTHER "google play" ROM, all to no avail.

 

Is it because I'm trying to do it via my SD card?  When I throw the zip on the internal memory, there's no option to load, only from the ADB or the cache.

 

I am a noob :(

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What are you using to flash the ROM's?  Are you trying to do it from Odin, or are you using ClockworkMod?

 

ClockworkMod also works best if you flash the ROM after rebooting into recovery mode from ClockworkMod, and not flashing it while the phone is fully loaded.

 

I really want to upgrade to Quantum 4, because it went all full SlimKat and is apparently heavenly on the battery, but I want to wait just to see if anyone has massive problems.

 

EDIT: Mike, in popping around the XDA forums, some of the newer ROMS had a slight issue with their exFAT that borked the phone's ability to read the SD Card. There's a fix around, if that's the problem.

 

I would recommend the XDA forums for anyone that roots and ROM's their phones.

 

forums.xda-developers.com 

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I believe my phone is unrooted, but I was able to get the OTA ROM to load via the recovery mode (volume up + power)

I downloaded Odin, but wasn't able to do anything with it. I shall look into CWM tomorrow.

I know the ATT phones were having troubles doing anything because their boot loaders were locked, so I may just give up. :)

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The reason custom roms weren't installing is because your device is unrooted and has a locked bootloader. In order to install alternate roms (Cyanogenmod, AOKP, Quantum, etc...), you first need to root your phone and then you need to unlock the bootloader. It'll then install a custom recovery (TWRP/CWM) and through there, you can install custom roms and kernels.

 

OTA Roms are different since you're basically just pushing an update to your phone that'll eventually be coming anyway. That's why you were able to install that without any problem.

 

EDIT: Just did some quick research and it appears that there's no way to root an ATT GS4 running 4.4.2. You'd have to downgrade to 4.3 and then root, then install the Safestrap custom recovery (I've never used that one. I've only used TWRP and CWM, so I can't comment to Safestrap's UI) and then you could install a custom rom.

 

This thread goes into greater detail: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2663545

 

Seems doable, but a little more involved than traditional methods.

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I would like to thank y'all for your help, but I do believe this is all over my head, and whenever I get get greedy about anything it turns out for the worst, so I'm gonna just toss in the towel.

Thank you all very much

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No problem. I don't blame you. I'd be skeptical about having to go through all that to root the device myself, and I've been rooting/flashing devices since the original Droid came out on Verizon at the end of '09. I definitely wouldn't do it if it were my first time.

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