[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S 4] Biker1:
The following may help others who have found themselves in similar situations as I have regarding Samsung splash screen freezes, apps not working as they should, galleries not appearing, not being able to reboot after successfully flashing the ROM, not able to flash the ROM, Aroma issues, etc., etc.

My issues have been well documented, and a few others have experienced similar issues.

After flashing 8.5, l all of the above occurred do here's what I did:

- flashed an entirely different ROM which also had Aroma cooked in, to narrow down what the cause of the issues were.

- ROM installed fine, but I couldn't Reboot. Would get stuck on the Samsung splash screen.

- I threw the phone out the Window.

All issues resolved!

Just kidding.......

What I did next:

- I ODINd back to Stock

- ODINd CF-AUTO-ROOT by Chainfire even though Alpha has root)

- ODINd PhilZ Recovery as has been previously suggested by Jamison904, jangst123and others.

(PhilZ asks if you want to root, but it said su, so I didn't think it was SuperSU, although uit may have been)

I knew others had success with PhilZ, but I also had success with TWRP 2.5.0.2 for a few months, before TWRP met Aroma, and was very used to the TWRP user interphase.

But I had spent countless hours troubleshooting which wasn't very enjoyable, so I decided to go with PhilZ.

- booted into PhilZ, which has a wipe which asks if you're installing a new ROM (or similar wording) which is pretty cool and easy. This wipes everything except Internal SD.

Coming from TWRP, I have a learning curve with PhilZ but it should go well.

The GUI is sweet :cool:

- installed 8.0

- Aroma choices made

- Aroma completed and transitioned to PhilZ prior to boot. Here's where I noticed a difference as compared to TWRP. PhilZ took a few seconds prior to boot as if it was computing parameters or something. Like getting the ducks all in a row. TWRP was erratic prior to Booting, as sometimes the lock slide would appear and then boot, sometimes the Recovery screen appeared longer prior to Booting, etc. I had mentioned this previously and thought this may be the cause of the erratic issues I was having, in addition to solutions that were all over the place.

- booted successfully, waited 10 minutes and rebooted successfully.

I rebooted an additional 3 times as required for certain restored apps. All reboots issue free.

The camera is working properly, as are the gallery selections, no splash freezing, reboots issue free, etc.

Even though I've only flashed with PhilZ once, the fact that the issues that I had earlier after flashing with TWRP did not appear with PhilZ is an excellent sign of what will be with future installs.

If others are having issues as described above, and in my previous posts, I would suggest to install PhilZ Recovery, as this change may resolve most of the issues you're encountering.

The common denominator between the previous issues such as screen splash freezes is that they were erratic, meaning that they wouldn't appear each time, and what fixed it the first time didn't fix it the first. When you thought you had the solution, that same solution might not work the next time the issue occurred.

I have read that others had similar issues as I had, and they weren't uusing TWRP. I think someone was using Philz, but the cause may not have been the same or maybe the issue was slightly different. Or maybe it was related to PhilZ. Either way, with only one flash with PhilZ, the stableness and lack of issues are very noticeably so maybe this will also help you out :cool: