The Definitive Noobs Guide to Flashing and/or Fixing the SGS4G! POST QUESTIONS HERE!

Hi all,

I am starting this thread to help cut down on the noob questions that are irritating our devs and potentially driving them away (less bhundven, who has already left xda).

I know that there is already a thread like this by mad_fitter, but his is outdated. I will start the guide in the second post.

I was a noob, as we all were at one time, and I did a lot of reading in order to get my phone rooted and flashing my first rom (Bionix Frost, back in the good ol' Froyo days ) and the more I read, the more I see the devs getting irritated with the noob questions and I know that if we lose our devs (especially raver) we are screwed as a phone community. I'm not trying to make the noobs feel bad, I remember being one and being so eager to get stuff done I would essentially demand things from devs, then i learned my lesson and started reading and reading and learning and learning and now I flash new roms all the time with no issues. Lesson: READ

And that's the reason I'm writing this, hopefully questions can be asked here (and ultimately, the guide will be good enough that no one will have to ask questions, and they can just read the guide).

I have made this guide inherently redundant. I have posted steps to certain things in two different sections as they are used in different situations and I don't want to force you guys to bounce back and forth between posts.

If you find that my guide is helpful, PLEASE click the "Thanks" button!​

SGS4G -> Samsung Galaxy S 4G (by T-Mobile in the USA), if this is NOT your phone or the phone you intend to mess with, you are in the wrong forum.

CWM -> Clockwork Mod Recovery, this is the utility you will use to flash all of your roms, kernels and modems. DO NOT FLASH CWM THROUGH ROM MANAGER!!!! USE THE ONE-CLICK!!!

ROM (Read Only Memory) -> in the traditional sense, a ROM was unchangable (read-only) memory within your computer. One example is that some older computers used ROMs to store the OS on a chip. In order to change the OS, the chip(s) had to be physically replaced. ROMs, as they pertain to your phone, contain the necessary file systems, OS, and apps for your phone to function. Stock ROMs are those released by Samsung though you may find variations of those flashable through means other than Kies Mini (ODIN, CWM, Heimdall). Custom ROMs are the creation of a developer or developers that modifies the stock ROMs.

Stock ROM - A ROM released by Samsung for your phone. This is considered stock as it contains no post-release modifications. This is the ROM officially supported by Samsung on your phone. Official stock releases include the T959VUVKD1 (Android 2.2 Froyo) and T959VUVKJ6 (Android 2.3 Gingerbread) ROMs.

Kernel -> the kernel is the core of an OS. It is responsible for memory management, scheduling, managing other system resources, among other things. (thanks to stephen_w for this definition as well as the definitions for "ROM" and "Stock ROM")

Modem ([Mo]dulator [Dem]odulator) -> helps your phone interpret wireless signals sent from your cell network and wireless routers and also send data back to them (flashing different modems can help improve your cell reception) (thanks FB)

Bootloaders -> these are the files that allow your phone to boot into the system, recovery mode and download mode. These are the equivalent to the BIOS of a computer (once again, thanks FB)

Download Mode -> this is what you need to boot the phone in order to flash through ODIN or Heimdall

Recovery Mode -> this is what you need to boot the phone in order to flash things through CWM (there is a default Samsung recovery, however, you CANNOT flash roms, etc. through that recovery)

ODIN/Heimdall -> these are computer based flashing utilities. ODIN is a leaked Samsung program which ONLY works on Windows, where as Heimdall is an open-source utility developed by Glass Echidna that can be used on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

ext4 (EXTensible Filesystem, Version 4) -> ext4 is the filesystem that you will be running on the /system, /data and /cache partitions of your phone's OS IF you have converted to them through the Voodoo Lagfix menu of CWM (we will cover this later).

Bloat[ware] -> this is a set of applications that either the carrier (in our case T-Mobile) or the manufacturer (Samsung) ships the phone with pre-installed. Most of these apps can be removed with on issues, but be careful before trying to remove them.​

Alright, the first step to getting your SGS4G going in the custom direction is rooting. There are three ways to go about this:

You can either use bhundven's One-Click with his custom kernel (Download SMS KJ6 (beta2d) Kernel Stock Rom with Bootloaders), located HERE, or, if you don't want to bother with CWM and JUST want a rooted stock rom to use apps such as Titanium Backup, then you can use the Fully Back-To-Stock UVKJ6 from the same thread as above and root using the method HERE (no, that method is not specifically for our phone, but bhundven stated HERE that it worked).

So that is Step One.

Step Two brings about some more decisions for you to make. There are many different rom/kernel combos you can run, such as:
Custom Rom/Stock Kernel
Stock Rom/Custom Kernel
Stock Rom/Stock Kernel (rooted or unrooted)
or
Custom Rom/Custom Kernel (which is what most people run)

There are a plethora of custom Gingerbread (Android 2.3) based roms including:​

There are also four custom kernels available for our phones which are:​

Now onto tweaks. There are four sets of CWM flashable tweak files that can be used on any rom, and one specifically for Valhalla Black. They are:

• Adrenaline Shot v15 (beta) by dsexton702
  
• Adrenaline Shot v14-1 by dsexton702
  
• ThunderBolt v2.5.1 by pikachu01
  
• Valhalla Black Booster by dsexton702
  and
• Lighting Zap Final by thomas.raines

These tweaks can give better performance and battery life, as well as an overall smoother experience to your phone.​

So have you picked out a rom that you like yet? No? Then look back through that list and find one you like and download it, download one of those three kernels as well if you would like (kernels do come bundled with roms, as the have to in order to run, so you can just use the one that comes with your selected rom if you would like)!​

How To Flash a Kernel with Heimdall:

How To Flash a Modem with Heimdall:​

How To Flash a Modem With ODIN:​

Flashing a modem with ODIN is very simple. Here are the steps:
How To Flash with CWM:​

First off, depending on which kernel you are using you will have a different version of CWM. If you are using any of drhonk's kernels or any of bhundven's kernels BEFORE v3, you will have CWM v3.x. If you are using either bhundven's kernel v3 or v3.1 you will have CWM v5.x. You CANNOT make a backup with v3.x and restore it on a kernel that is running v5.x or vice versa. That said, if you have v3.x, some of the menu terminology will be a little different but you should still be able to navigate the menus all the same.

So now that you have your rom/kernel I'm going to walk you through, step-by-step how to flash a modem, kernel and rom. I am posting these walkthroughs in no particular order. They do not have to be done in this order. I suggest that you have your phone plugged into the charger while flashing anything.

You are first going to need to know how to boot into recovery mode. You can use the Quick Boot app from the market (found HERE) or, if you would like, you can do it manually by turning off your phone and then push, at the same time, the Power, Volume Up and Volume Down buttons until you see the screen where your phone initially powers on (Samsung Galaxy S 4G exclusively by T-Mobile, or something to that affect). Once that screen pops up, release the power button. Then you should boot into CWM (you will see a bunch of red text come up).

So, the first step to flashing anything is downloading it and placing it on your SD Card. Most people say to put it in the root of your SD, meaning not in a folder, but I keep my files together in one folder, that way it is easier to locate all of the files that you want to flash. You navigate CWM using the volume buttons to move up and down and using the power button to select your chosen option.​

To flash a kernel or modem follow these steps:​

The steps to flashing a rom are not much more difficult, it just takes time in some cases.​

Potential Problems:​

There are some problems that you could face when flashing roms. They are caused by various mistakes, not doing full wipes, etc. and they can also result from bad downloads of roms or kernels (happened a couple of times to me) and if it is your first time experiencing this, it can be fairly terrifying. But fret not, there are ways to fix this.

You do not always have to use ODIN, Heimdall or a One-Click, those are for the more serious problems. Many problems can be fixed by booting into CWM and Fixing Permissions, and/or wiping the cache and Dalvik cache.​

How to use ODIN:​

ODIN can be used to reset your phone to stock (unrooted in the case of this tutorial) provided that something goes wrong in the flashing process. Download ODIN from HERE (this is and older version as this is the one that I use and am familiar with, so it will be easier for me to direct you if you are using the same version as I am. i have never had problems with it). Now download THIS file to flash through ODIN and unzip it.

Your first step is to boot your phone into Download mode. You can do this by pulling the battery out of your phone, pressing and holding Volume Up and Volume Down, plugging your phone into you computer using a USB to Micro USB cable, and pushing the battery back into position in the back of your phone. If done properly, you will see a yellow triangle with an Android shoveling dirt in it come up on your phone's screen. You can then put the battery cover back on so you don't have to worry about the battery falling out (WHICH WILL BRICK YOUR PHONE IF YOU ARE FLASHING AND THAT HAPPENS)

So now that you are in download mode, open ODIN and set up your files so they look like this:



Once you have your files set like this and you have made sure that the check marks that I have ticked are ticked on your computer, you can plug your phone into the computer and START. Let this run and you should be back in working order shortly after.​

Flashing through Heimdall:​

Now to show you how to flash through Heimdall (for us OS X and Linux users). Go and grab Heimdall from HERE (I would suggest using the Heimdall-Frontend package, as that is what I will be showing you how to use). Once you download that, you can use the same package as we used to flash in ODIN, just decompress the .tar and then go into the folder and take the three files that end in .md5, remove the .md5 ending and the decompress those (you can then re-add the .md5 to the original files if you would like).

Now you are ready to load your files into Heimdall. You are going to need:
MODEM (extracted from T959VUVKG4-Phone-CL1037720.tar.md5)
CACHE (extracted from SGH-T959V-CSC-TMB-VIBRANTP.tar.md5)
DATAFS (extracted from SGH-T959V-CSC-TMB-VIBRANTP.tar.md5)
PARAM (extracted from CODE_T959VUVKG4_CL385158_REV00_user_low_noship.tar.md5)
FACTORYFS (extracted from CODE_T959VUVKG4_CL385158_REV00_user_low_noship.tar.md5)
and
KERNEL (extracted from CODE_T959VUVKG4_CL385158_REV00_user_low_noship.tar.md5, but you can use any of the zImages from kernels. However i would suggest that you use the stock KG4 and then flash drhonks KG4 and flash your selected kernel through CWM after that).
​

I will be adding in a section for themes later​