[General Topics] M2490311:
I had browsed this forum for awhile and was having major issues with AT&T because my phone, as it sat in the eyes of ATT, decided that I needed to be on towers in another county which completely rendered reaching me by land line impossible and my service was such garbage, that I went through five phone numbers in as many phones. My iPhone 4 was screwed, I got a 1st run Nokia Lumina Windows Phone, but the case and windows 8 killed it for me (you had antennae right where you'd normally rest your fingers and so talking on it was a chore. I decided to get another iphone, and another, all met with failure. I stumbled onto these forums one day and discovered the word "root." My iphone was again giving me trouble and my wifes android seemed to do more....way more.

So I'm on my way home with my first android- a cheap motorola atrix HD. When they finally fixed my tower issue I was on my fifth number and I had read on these forums about root. So I get home around Christmas, and promptly rooted my atrix without knowing anything and figured I would learn as I went. I used the motochopper root by djrbliss and Dan Rosenthal (I think) with the fix bootloader screen. I figured I would learn half assed and learn as I go. I download TIBU, and proceeded to brick my phone. I got verification at customer care that the atrix may have been modified, and if it wasnt defective, swap it at the store.

TIBU Brick

Ran on 70 apps total. Removed the wrong one, Brick.

Rooted and botched something stupid, BRICK.

Tried to flash Cyanogenmod. Brick.

Flashed Cyanogenmod and thought I didn't do it right: Grew Frustrated and formatted the phone. ( I was getting as many replacements as I wanted and my wife continued to get irritated with my new hobby which she still hates.

Take my hard bricked HD to ATT store just to find out that I am eligible for the next program.

I shied away from rooting, Got rid of the mega and then got a Galaxy S4. That fever came right back and the next thing I know I am reading, retaining and absorbing as I bricked my S4 four times- twice by not paying attention and twice by not understanding safestrap recovery. The fever of modding finnally got me off of my rear when the guy at best buy reflashed my s4 for the second time and told me about RSD Lite. I go, download RSD Lite, Install my motorola drivers, Install my Operating System via sideload, download CWM recovery, flash CM 10x.x and forget my gapps...no worries, as I had discovered goo.im and f-droid and a few other places where I just found the correct jb gapps moving up from ICS obviously. I then hard brick the Atrix HD and I reinstalled my OS, got the anysoft keyboard from f-droid (the motorola keyboard kept dying) and I flash CM 10 and the JB gapps and bam, I feel like i'm no longer a noob. I was gone for a few months when I did all of this and as soon as I got home, I bought my brothers note 2 which I promptly rooted using cf autoroot and odin and then I flashed the Pacman Rom Stable 4.3. I experienced a soft brick moving up to kit-kat and unstable nightlies of Pacrom, but I moved everything to my SD card and rom installer still had my 4.3 gapps, and stable 4.3 pac rom. I was short on money and had to get a loan on the note 2 which I m getting back.

Now, I'm staring at my S4 for weeks...thinking "god I hate this stupid thing because it has no root on NC1.

Finally, yesterday, I found the towelroot apk and I rooted my i337 NC1. I set up the phone in a few moments, hooked up the proper wanam modules, and I tried with no success to put CWM Philz touch recovery. I was almost resigned to just using the apex launcher but I couldn't stay away from pushing myself to the limit and finally installing safestrap and a touchwhiz rom. So tonight, I finally installed safestrap after reading the steps to get version 3.72 running. Now I was trying to find a compatible touchwhiz based rom that suited me because I finally safestrapped my s4 and ran a backup to my SD, followed by a full wipe (excluding the SD card) and I went right here to read more (on NC1 get the new ODEXED version and I flashed fine without odin, and not rebooting into DL mode, and am now running the Venom v3.02 Safe Strap rom on my S4 like a boss.

Now for the clincher if you're still reading...I don't even know linux, let alone how to use a terminal emulator but for some strange reason, I now know what to do and what not to do to brick a device, and most importantly of all,

super noobs take note:

I FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS EXACTLY.

I know little to nothing regarding the finer workings of phones (I now know better than to try to mess with things I know nothing about) but I paid attention.

And the payoff is being able to do this to almost any device...but now I am going to read up more because I want to build a nasty rom that gives the user so much access that it borders on criminally sick.

In short, the moral is to PAY ATTENTION. KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS. FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS.

Shout out here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2447482

And Here:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2447482&page=109

Mad props for the simple instruction. I'm gonna go play with my.....new touchwhiz ROM on my S4.