[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] daedric:
This is starting to sound a little confusing now... Never owned a device like this before... Had the ZTE Blade, HP Touchpad running Android, and some other random chinese device.... Managed to mess around with those in safety, knowing that I cant do it no harm... I'm sure this will be ok once I get use too it. But I just fear certain Apps could kill it, unintentionally..

Sorry to be such a Noob, and clueless with this device. All other devices, it was simple... We just needed one Recovery.... CWM! However, now it seems I need different ones for different ROMs. I mainly plan to use PAC 4.3... However, of course this toy will be new to me, so I would like to try various ROMs, inc CM, PAC and STOCK (based on GB, ICS only if safe on safe kernel, and JB)... Could I do all of this in the latest Philz? Or do I need to use a different one (and which others, I only know of Philz). Also regarding Philz, do I use the 5.11.02 (heard that has heat related issues) or do I use 5.08.xx (which people seem to be going back too...?) And also which Philz do I need, apparently my Baseband is N7000XXLT3 (I couldnt see a Philz that matched that...?)

The Blade, like so many other Android devices, was running AOSP. Maybe a theme, a few custom apps like dialer and contacts, but nothing major. Porting AOSP and CM to it was a "easy" task. Samsung, HTC and a few others, take this customization to a new level. From the lockscreen, notifications, dialer, contacs, everything is custom made. Usually, this requires tweaks to the Android Framework. That makes a few OEM apps incompatible with AOSP (you can't just pick the camera app from TW and expect it to run on AOSP, it won't). To make matters worse, this framework difference is augmented but Linux Kernel tweaks. So, you now have a Android version that requires a custom tailored kernel. Ence the kernel versions of Samsung and HTC.

So, Samsung N7000 has 2 major branches , TW which stopped on 4.1.2 (be it official or custom) and AOSP which is on 4.3 (all custom, there's no official AOSP for the note like the GS4). HTC also has this, there's the Sense branch, and the AOSP branch.

Now, MOST (i almost dare say ALL but one) have the recovery on a separated partition, along with it's micro kernel. Recovery is like a small Linux OS with a small kernel, to do it's tasks. On the Blade any most others, it's on a separated partition, there's /boot for the Android kernel and boot files, and a hidden partition with the Recovery kernel and necessary files. If you press a certain keys while booting, instead of /boot the device uses that partition and Recovery loads.

Now, Samsung like ****ing retards they are, decided to have recovery mixed with the boot partition, and i suspect that it's dependend on the Android kernel. The problem here is, you flash a kernel, you flash a recovery. Your new recovery MIGHT not be able to restore that NAND backup that you did on your old recovery. Worse, you damage that partition, you're left without means to boot android, or recovery to fix it.

So, it's might be a major pain in the ass, but it's not so bad. Just have to pay attention.

Free tip:

Android is based on a few partitions, there's /boot for kernel and such, /system for the Android OS, config files and the very basic, /data for your apps, settings, saves, etc, /cache to keep a fast cache, and lastly sdcard0 and sdcard1 for internal and external storage.

Now, Samsung, like genius they are, decided to add another one to the mixture, /preload. This partition is only used by TW roms (TW does not fit inside /system unless you start cutting alot of standard apps).

Most TW kernel and it's recovery, can backup /preload on a NAND backup. Most AOSP kernels and CWR can't.

Also, by some mysterious reason, ALL TW based recoveries DON'T backup /preload by default, you have to go and set it so.

When and if you get the device, things will start to become clearer :)