Thank you for your very thorough & patient explanation. I used to have a DEV ED. phone, and used Kies on it, that resulted in flashing retail edition bootloader on mine & locked the phone up. It no longer says Developer mode on the phone.
I finally got through to Samsung, and for now they have agreed to re-flash it with Developer Edition bootloader after a lot of talk.
But as it stands I have no warranty on the phone, so I cant attempt it.
The idea came to me when I used Kies and it converted my Dev Edition to Retain edition.
I did know that safe strap will not flash the kernel, but I also do know that T-mobile kernels are compatible with Verizons. So I was looking for T-mobile rom that has no Aroma in it, because I am thinking about joining t-mobile.
With a locked bootloader, i figured as long as the rom does not have Aroma in it, every thing should work and boot up, and i was right, except for the wifi thing.
Didnt know all the technical details though, so thank you for shedding light. I did lose my efs partition many times when my phone was DEV ED, but lucky I used TWRP to back up my efs, so I restored it, and it fired right up. It saved me from many bootloops, but your point did remind me, that odin does not restore efs, I think.
Not sure how kies is any different than odin.
Thanks again !
EDIT: NVM about wifi not working, I flashed
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2588075 and now everything works, just waiting on my SIM to see if wifi calling and T-mobile data will work.