[Q] Got my Hands on a VIbrant. Now how do I replace its ROM?

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kodackx

Member
Jul 1, 2014
11
4
Hello everyone.

As the title says I recently got my hands on a Samsung Vibrant. I have it from a friend who just left the apartment we lived in together for 5 months as she didn't need it anymore. It currently has a MIUI ROM on it and I'd like to change it to sada23's unofficial CM 11.0

The problem is however that my only previous experience with flashing ROM was with a Samsung Galaxy Chat when I slapped Jelly Bean on it which was only released in a few countries. So I went right ahead but found the amount of things I have to do overwhelming compared to when I just used ODIN on the old phone.

I'm trying to tell what the current status is of the phone and this is what I've been able to come up with so far. (also after googling what everything is and does lol)

- MIUI present so custom ROM install definitely possible
- When I booted into recovery mode I saw it has: "Semaphore CWM Recovery v6.0.1.9" (which I presume is outdated)
- BY default the MIUI ROM apparently has a superuser app (which lead me to think that the device is rooted), however everytime I try to use an app that requires root I encounter errors.

I just did a backup using the recovery mode with semaphore cause I saw this is usually a first step in all the guides I've read. However from here on out I am completely clueless on what to do because all the guides were so different from eachother and I have a feeling my phone is in a vague situation. (root/not rooted?)

So I was hoping someone here could point me into the right direction and help me get to CM from MIUI. Thank you in advance.
 

tri0xinn

Senior Member
Jul 11, 2008
412
39
I'll be following this thread.. kinda in a similar situation. Although a bit worse. I had an old vibrant in a drawer from years back in mint condish!.. last thing I did was root and install recovery. Unfortunately I'm a stooge and without thinking threw a 4.4 rom zip on the phone.. booted to recovery and cleaned and tried to flash.. bottom line i'm in a bootloop now... and I gave up when odin wasn't detecting the phone.. I"ll figure that out eventually, but it would be great to just have a 4.4 Odin tar for a quick and painless install... or at least a tar from a 4.0 with root and recovery to make the 4.4 upgrade easy.
Also would be interested in knowing if the 4.4 roms work well.. Gps will be most important to me since I plan to use this as my jogging phone.

alrighty.. let's get this party started!
 

RudeBwoy

Senior Member
Aug 21, 2014
103
57
NY
Edit - I think the best thing for you to do is odin back to stock then root install custom bootloader and then flash your new rom, I've heard that you can go straight to kk from stock but the guy who posted above me has problems because of that so I would try flashing an ICS ROM for the recovery first, and don't forget to make a nandroid backup

You can find all the files and programs you'll ever need here http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1982728 in NOOB_IN_NEED 'S ref thread

Hope I was of some help if I was hit the thanks button ;)

sent from the depths of paradise - Jamaica
using SGH-T959
ROM: unofficial CM11 4.4.4 by sada
Kernel: stock
 
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