[Samsung Galaxy S (4G Model)] hani1400:
I wanted to share my knowledge and experience from the past 2 days. Most of the help came from guides and posts on this forum so I wanted to give that back.

We were trying to root the SGS4G and because we're noobs we made the mistake of thinking it was a Vibrant. Got a Vibrant ROM and tried to flash it though Odin WITH re-partition checked. Everything we read said if you do either one of these things, you will brick your phone.

Sure enough we bricked the phone. It was trying to boot into the Vibrant ROM but was getting stuck on the word 'Vibrant' and then showing a whole lot of weird colored pixels. We then learned we'd made a massive mistake and that the phone wasn't a Vibrant after all.

We got a stock ROM for SGS4G and started trying to push them through Odin. Faced countless FAILS and freezes and finally it took us to the Recovery Mode and we tried the Restore option. It booted into a crippled SGS4G ROM. When it booted, it vibrated every 10 seconds or so and it had a null IMEI and unknown baseband.

We tried following a guide that wanted to change some text in the nv_data.bin but the numbers we were meant to be editing (0018810?) didn't exist in our nv_data.bin. So that didn't work for us.

In the meantime we tried to flash the stock ROM in Odin but kept getting FAILs and Freezes. With this step we lost even the crippled operating system and couldn't reach anything except the 'phone --!-- computer' screen. Luckily, this acts the same as download mode, so not bricked. We kept trying to push the stock SGS4G stock ROM (Froyo 2.2) several times and failing.

At one point we got a completely black screen, wouldn't turn on. Bricked again. We found this post on RootzWiki and it worked for us that time and brought it back from the black screen to download mode http://rootzwiki.com/topic/1820-how-to-unbrick-your-sgs4g/

Somehow we ended up at this guide here on XDA for fixing the "null/null" IMEI http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1142829

We followed that guide. When you add the PIT file it automatically checks 'Re-Partition' in Odin, we didn't uncheck it. Bricked again. It was stuck on the Samsung logo and when we tried to get to download mode it got stuck on a black screen with the loading circle/lines and 2 computers were giving 'The USB device has malfunctioned' when we plugged it in. The unbrick guide above (RootzWiki) didn't help this time. We tried restarting the computer, let the phone rest without battery for half an hour, held power button for a minute without battery, still nothing.

Finally I accidentally pressed the power button (rather than the volume buttons to get into download mode) and it went to the samsung logo (as expected) and after that I was able to get into download mode. The key to this I think is to keep on trying powering on normally then try download mode over and over and eventually it should get unstuck and the computer should recognize it again.

Once I had it back in download mode, I followed this guide again BUT!!! I made sure to un-check re-partition and I did not check "Phone EFS Clear" (because I had tried that already before it was bricked and wanted to see if a straight ROM would work first). Everything worked perfectly, I got my IMEI and Baseband back, without modifying anything.

:eek:

I don't know if this was a miracle, or if any of it will work for anyone else, but the moral of the story is don't give up even if you've done the absolute worst possible thing. I don't even think hardbrick exists on this phone after everything we were able to save it from.

Cheers