[Galaxy S 4 Active General] br0adband:
Ok, so even in spite of me deciding to stick with MF1 I ended up having to go out in the afternoon on Saturday and my travels got me within striking distance of that same Best Buy a second time and I ended up taking a chance.

Second time around I get a guy that immediately said "We don't do that sort of thing..." and I went on my spiel about Samsung tech support, yada yada yada, blah blah blah and he eventually said "Well I'm the Samsung department manager and I've never heard of such a thing..." I ended up telling him about the Alt+F10 thing and he dismissed it without so much as a care in the world.

I told him about putting the phone into download mode if it shows up as incompatible and he did so but when reconnected to the laptop they're running their software on it still did nothing.

I reiterated the thing about Alt+F10 and he balked and never did it.

I said perhaps he should call Samsung field service support and he balked and never did it.

SO basically I've wasted maybe an hour total time and two stops at Best Buy only to be brick-walled by two employees of either Samsung or Best Buy (maybe both, who the hell knows) and gotten absolutely nowhere by people that I think either a) don't have a clue about how this stuff works or b) decided that since I'm not buying anything that they're not going to give a damn about my phone and just dismiss me by playing stupid. I mean, for a department manager he barely looked me in the eye and spent almost the entire 15+ minutes I was trying to get his assistance staring off at other customers and not giving me his full attention for more than a few seconds at best.

Certainly not the best customer service I've ever had, and damned sure some of the worst on both visits. :(

But that's that and unless someone releases an ODIN One-Click for MF3 that can be applied directly without issues and works for mine, I'm sticking with what I've got meaning MF1 from this point on. Sucks but, well, I put myself in this boat so there's nobody to blame but me. :p

ps

This "manager" even said he'd prefer not to help me at least twice during our conversation, and then admitted that he'd done this before for another customer - flashing MF3 specifically - and it fried the customer's phone, bricked it solid right there in the store and they had to replace the person's phone so he was very wary of helping me with any flashing whatsoever. What I noted was that when my phone was placed into download mode and the USB cable was reattached, he turned the laptop just enough so that I couldn't see the screen and he just kinda faked pressing keys on the keyboard, faked using the trackpad on the laptop, and basically didn't do a damned thing at all in terms of attempting to flash that latest ROM.

Some people, I swear.

pss

This "manager" also admitted that yes, Android 4.3 for the Galaxy S4 Active is scheduled - his words exactly, not a misquote - "scheduled to be released at the end of October..." and I double-checked him on it to be sure and he said it again: "Oh, yeah, 4.3 is coming at the end of the month..." and I asked if he meant for the Galaxy S4 (which he happens to own and had on his belt in an Otter Box) or the Galaxy S4 Active like mine and he said "... for the Active" and never mentioned the standard Galaxy S4 at all so... we'll see what happens at the end of October I suppose.