[AT&T Samsung Galaxy S 4 Android Development] indie_dev:
Well, even though Samsung gave me a service number to send the phone in for repair, I decided to take a chance with my local AT&T store.

First, I needed to get rid of the Samsung unlock screen which shows that the phone was rooted, messed with etc. For that, I did the following:

Booted to Odin recovery and did a wipe/reset as well as a cache wipe (which still quit with an error). Took out the battery, re-inserted

Booted to download mode

Fired up Kies which - again - prompted me about a failed emergency recovery. So I resumed the process and when prompted to put the phone in recovery mode etc, I just plugged it in

Of course since Kies is on MDL and the phone is on MF3, it was destined to fail as it has been. It did.

Unplugged the phone, took out the battery

Inserted battery, powered up the phone and got the Yellow triangle screen informing me about a failed firmware update. The Samsung unlock screen was gone. I was set!

Took the battery out, re-inserted it. Shoved it in my pocket and tipped out the door.

So a five min walk took me to the nearest AT&T company store where I waited five minutes before I got to see someone.

Told her my new phone did an OTA update which apparently went badly because by morning it got stuck at the AT&T screen when booted. I tried to restore it with Kies and that failed with spectacular results. At this point, she was staring at the Yellow triangle screen.

She told me that I needed to go to a store that had Device Service Center technicians on staff and they would fix it. Said they get that a lot and that the ATT phone tech support reps keep sending people to stores without a DSC.

She gave me a piece of paper with a list of six AT&T company stores (not the authorized resellers!) with a DSC team on-site. The closest was a 10 min train ride and five minute walk. I took off like a bat outta hell.

Got to the DSC, signed in, waited for exactly 23 mins before they called me. I was playing Candy Crush Saga on my iPhone5 the whole time, trying to calm my nerves and curb the anxiety. :p

I explained to the DSC tech what happened. He didn't even blink. He asked for my phone number, ID and the phone. Asked me if I had backed up - to which I said yes - then took off to the back room.

He emerged a few minutes later to inform me that they were going to give me a new phone!

Apparently my phone had a serious problem that crashed not one - but TWO - of their computers as they were trying to flash the latest ROM image using their extra special sauce. He said that it could be that my phone's flash memory and/or partition were probably corrupt/damaged. He thought it was probably the former because he said that their tool would repartition the phone automatically when flashing with their ROM image and return the phone to an out-of-the-box factory condition.

The tech even transferred my Spigen.t screen protector to the new phone; though it didn't fit properly (I am going to get it replaced anyway).

Of course once I had the new phone in my mitts, I asked him if I needed to do the latest OTA update to MF3. "What's that?" He asked. I said the latest ROM image from Samsung. I told him that I wanted the one that originally came with the phone just in case it was this new ROM that was causing problems. To which he informed me that all the new and refurbished phones have the latest ROM released back in June/July. Then he said, "You know, the one that blocks people from installing custom ROMs on it". To which I gave him a dead pan blank stare as if I had no idea wtf he was going on about. I swear I would have cracked up laughing there and then if it wasn't for the fact that at this point, I just wanted to get the hell outta Dodge before he changed his mind. :laugh:

So back to the fun stuff. First things first. Ama gonna root this baby as soon as I finish typing this. :D