[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] jt323bd:
So when diving into the world of modifying a smart phone, there is a lot of learning one must do reading threads and watching videos prior to getting started. Otherwise instead of rooting your phone, you may end up bricking it.

So lets talk about some of these things.

First off, if you are looking to open your phone up to unlimited modification, the quintessential step is rooting it, which is to say, unlocking root access so everything can be changed from fonts and colors to CPU overclocking.

If I understand this correctly, Rooting is done by flashing a modified kernel onto the phone. I wont try to pretend I know that with any confidence, these are the terms I'd like better explanations for. so... A release comes from the manufacturer and contains everything from the operating system to the firmware and the modem. A ROM is a pre-customized variation of a release, dunno exactly what a TAR, MD5, or a kernel is. A modem is a part of a release, but just the software part that deals with how your phone uses its radios. NANDroid is a way to completely backup your phone as a NAND. Clockworkmod is a utility set that can load and manage ROMS, NAND's, themes, and all kinds of other stuff. Recovery is actually usually used as a term for a built in function for restoring your phone back to a pre-loaded state (if it's not bricked, which means something went wrong and the phone won't turn on, which is different from soft-brick which means the phone is in a startup-boot-loop) I don't know what a bootlogger is. ODIN is a program 'leaked' by samsung used for flashing updates onto phones. Download Mode or Odin mode is used for updating and what you boot into by turning off your phone, then turning it on while holding the volume down button. a OneClick is a pre-made ODIN update that that automatically updates your phone. Stock means the release is unmodified from the manufacturers original. A Tweak is a modification that can be flashed onto a ROM? A Theme I assume is an aesthetic style that can be applied to even a non-rooted phone. But I think it requires the phone to be Deodexed, which is something that can be done to a release... otherwise the release is odexed?

GA10, Fk23, FL16, etc etc. You're probably wondering what that is. It's a coding system for the date of the release. Because android released in 2007, the coding system starts at 2007. That first letter represents the year, the second letter the month, and the number represents the day of the month. So a release from january 1, 2007 would have been AA01. febuary 15th 2007 would have been AB15, which is why a release on december 16 2012 got FL16.

This may not be the end, but to wrap up the small bit that I've learned in 17 hours of reading FAQ's and stickies, cutting edge threads and archives. The last 4 things we need to talk about are the flash count, or odin counter, which tracks how many times your phone has been flashed by an external source. Then there is the yellow triangle which is an indicator thrown during startup by a phone which has detected that it is not running a stock ROM. these 2 indicators can be reset on our e4gt by using a USB Jig, a small piece of hardware which can be bought online specific to our phone, which when plugged into the microusb port, resets the odincount and gets rid of the yellow triangle. And finally, there are some special procedures that must be observed when flashing around from release to release. Flashing to the same release is relatively safe, it sounds, but flashing down or up should be done without preserving data. (restore vs nodata).

Honestly, I've spent a lot of time on learning just this, and I still feel like I'm writing words that don't add up. In fact, I know I am. So I'd honestly appreciate it if someone could take what I've tried to do here, edit it for readability, proper word usage, accuracy, add any or all missing information, and post a new sticky. One that explains these things. Because there are a lot of stickies that provide instructions for how to do things, but very few are written in a way a beginner can understand. I've bolded words that are regularly used but dont make complete sense to non-developers and novice power-user hopefuls.