[Alcatel Idol X ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other ] Cordial Humanoid:
Hi all, and thanks acca and dikirill for your help.

At the time when I wrote my original question my phone did not respond to the power button and could not enter recovery mode. However, I was able to restore the phone using SP Flash tool as suggested by acca.

In detail, Installed SP Flash tool and the USB driver on my computer, and I followed the steps from Post 643 by Defaultgame.

Things that I did not know and found out during the process:

- For SP Flash tool, you must uncompress the ROM archives onto directories on your computer before you can use them in the tool.

- The tool requires a "scatter-loading file" even to do the initial format of the phone; I took that from the uncompressed archive of the first ROM "TCL_S950T.zip" in post 643. You have to do this for the initial formatting, and then for every ROM you try to install.

- When you choose the scatter-loading file in the Download tab in the tool, you have to manually uncheck "PRELOADER" and "MOBILE_INFO", and manually check "CUSTPACK", and manually choose the path for the custpack (it should be in the same directory where you got the scatter-loading file).

- The tool works so that you must keep the phone powered off and unconnected, and start the ROM installation process (called "Download" in the tool, and only then connect the phone to the computer - otherwise the tool does not detect the phone properly. I think the same applies to the initial formatting step too.

- The "TCL_S950T.zip" in post 643 has a Chinese recovery, I could not read it so I just pressed the power button until the phone powered off and then I installed the second ROM.

- You really do need to enter recovery and do the wipes mentioned in post 643, otherwise the phone will not start if you try to start it straightaway (for me it went into a bootloop, and would not enter recovery mode; I had to reinstall the second ROM using SP Flash tool in order to be able to enter recovery mode again).

- After installing the second ROM I was able to boot up; however, the camera app did not work. Maybe it was because my phone was a chinese model (TCL S950, not Alcatel One Touch Idol X)?

- I tried downloading the "Official , STOCK 1006 Flash with MKT tools, NOT with CWM recovery" ROM from the first post on the thread, and installed it with SP Flash tool. This ROM had a working camera, but no Google apps.

- I looked at some ROMs posted in this thread, but it looked like they had unsolved issues or did not have the "transparent status bar" which I like visually; so I searched elsewhere too. I eventually found a ROM by Manowarcero from needrom.com.

- In order to install the ROM by Manowarcero, I was not able to use SP Flash tool; instead, I had to install a new CWM recovery using the instructions in the first post of this thread (this was possible because at this point I already had a mostly working ROM installed in the phone).

---- In short, I downloaded and installed Mobile Uncle Tools onto the phone by downloading the APK with the phone's own browser and installing it.

---- I then downloaded the image for CWM recovery to my computer, connected the phone to the computer, and copied the ZIP file to the phone's root storage directory (it seems it had to be in the root storage directory, Mobile Uncle Tools did not find it otherwise), and unconnected the phone.

---- I then installed the CWM recovery using Mobile Uncle Tool, and after that was done I rebooted the phone back up.

---- I then downloaded the ROM by Manowarcero to my computer (it is a ZIP file), connected the phone to the computer, and copied the ZIP file to the phone's root storage directory, and unconnected the phone.

---- I then rebooted the phone into the new CWM recovery, and used it to install the ROM. In the end I did the usual wipes, same as mentioned in post 643, and finally rebooted the phone into the new ROM. (Manowarcero's description for the ROM also mentioned some other steps regarding root and post-installation tips, but so far I did not do them or need them.)

- Currently the ROM seems to be working correctly, it has a working camera and Google apps.