You are making the right decision. Pickup your new phone and take the official OTA update and then root afterwards. Hopefully by then there will be full custom ROMS with all the current updates cooked into them.
I don't think it's possible to root after you take the OTA. I can't anyway. The update overwrites CWM with stock recovery on boot.
Enable download mode on the phone > flash the cwm recovery via odin > flash root zip in cwm recovery.
can't get into cwm recovery because the phone overwrites it. I tried to boot into it and it just boot loops until i let it boot without holding the recovery buttons. Were you able to boot into CWM after installing the OTA then reflashing cwm in odin?
I didn't, but I do believe I saw a user that did successfully.
I finally got it to work. After flashing CWM in Odin, left auto-reboot checked. As soon as the phone vibrates I just held Home and Volume Up and was able to finally boot into CWM.
Generally you should leave that checked. Glad it worked.
Yes, just make a backup, do your wipes, flash in recovery.
Well yes. But do you think I have to wipe data? Or just cache
You can flash the rom just wiping the caches; without wiping data, you may get unforeseen errors / fcs. I'd wipe it to be safe, but to each their own.
Good catch, I hadn't flashed yet...due to necromorphs...
