[Galaxy S 4 Active General] br0adband:
Ok, so... as a testament to my own persistence and someone else I'm about to mention.

Ok, so... I had to go out today into a different part of town and I ended up in the vicinity of another Best Buy on the northwestern side of town (Rainbow and Las Vegas for any other XDA locals here in Vegas). I went in with a printout I made of the instructions above, made it look somewhat "official" with a Samsung Sans font and everything, and met a lady at the Samsung "Shop" in the store - she's apparently the manager of that part of the store, and I simply said I needed to have my phone flashed to the latest available update (obviously MF3) and she didn't immediately pull that "We don't do that sort of thing" that other manager did at the other location mentioned above.

So, I started off on a good note, so to speak.

~2.5 hours later - seriously, I'm not joking - we were done and I had MF3 flashed, finally. ;)

Now, about that persistence thing, it doesn't just apply to me, it applies to that manager that simply wouldn't give up at all and I applaud her for her efforts and the fact that she just wasn't going to let this thing "beat" her and not get flashed. It was the first time in that store they'd ever had to do a flash like this, and after spending an hour trying to get it done based on the instructions I provided, she ended up starting a chat session with a field service rep that basically talked her through doing everything that she'd just spent the past hour doing and it was pissing her - meaning this manager - off and we just got a good laugh out of the whole situation.

Into the second hour the field service rep finally realized it was out of her league so they pushed it to another tech - this is all going on with an instant chat on that laptop they use for the flashing purposes. The second tech didn't make this manager do everything all over again thankfully but he did keep her waiting for extended periods of time to respond, sometimes 5 full minutes at a time.

Again, this manager and I were just having a laugh about it all, talking about new phones, technology, we discussed the Galaxy Gear which they had in her store, etc, a nice conversation about a variety of electronics and computer related stuff actually.

After about 2 hours she was given a number to call and did so, waited 10 minutes on hold, answered like 4 questions with that tech on the phone, pulled the battery, put it in download mode, he provided her with password that did something completely different from the one the previous instant chat field service rep had given her and got into the proper menu with that second password and as soon as she plugged in my GS4A it recognized it and pushed the MF3 update to the phone.

Man I tell ya, we gave each other at least 3 "high fives" when the progress bar hit 3%, then 4%, etc. ;)

Regardless, I told her I'd be writing a letter commending her efforts, at not giving me a brick wall response of "We don't do that sort of thing" like 2 other Samsung "Shop" managers did at two different Best Buys here in town, and for just being awesome in general.

So, as a tip to go along with the instructions provided above, and after watching her do this personally:

- there is no "log in" step at all; they're already logged into the flashing software so when they press Alt+F10 there's nothing else to do but enter the password required, and apparently there are different passwords and each one provides a different level of access in some manner so it could something to take note of. If you try to get this done at a Best Buy and they have issues, don't mention the "log in" portion; just make sure they understand they need the password to access the phone recovery options.

- the SGH-I537 (the AT&T model) is not at the top of the list as that picture above displays - both of us had to scan the list of available devices twice until we spotted it. There is a listing for the SGH-I537 and the MF2 build, which should then be able to OTA to MF3 but after scrolling even further down the list we spotted the actual MF3 build but it was tough to spot at first and even the second glance. If you were looking at the scroll bar as the indicator for the full list of devices that software works with, the SGH-I537 ends up being about 60% down the list, at least on the machine we were using, it could be different depending on the updates, who knows.

I guess persistence is the key. I really was ok with staying on MF1 for the time being, but realizing that there could be that 4.3 OTA coming soon enough, and realizing that I don't really care much for root, it doesn't offer me anything presently I can't live without (the only app with root access is ES Explorer and I don't actually need that aspect), and there's always a chance that even if 4.3 locks it up tight and prevents rolling back to older firmware in some manner, maybe someone will discover a root for 4.3 whenever, I have no idea.

But I'm on MF3 now and I'm sticking with it, no root, not even gonna bother around with Safestrap at all (it works with MF3 but I'm just not gonna do it anymore).

So that's that... now I have a letter to write. ;)