[Galaxy S 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Carpenter29:
Ok so this is my first post, hope I'm in the right section. This will be a long post as I've tried everything I could find to fix my problem.

So I bought a Fido Samsung Galaxy S4, I9505 SGH-I337M from an online auction site (not ebay). The phone is completely stock, its not rooted, no customer recovery, nothing. Phone was in wayyyyy better shape than I expected, I would say near mint with original box, charger, cable etc. Everything worked great except the wifi, as other people have reported it would not turn on, toggle switch would move over and attempt to turn on, but after 15 seconds or so it would switch back to off. I also tried 3rd party apps to manage wifi connections without any luck. It was running the firmware ending in NE1 so I thought updating it to the newer firmware, NI2, might have this fix. Since I couldn't connect to wifi I figured I should do it manually following the instructions I found on sammobile.com. So I downloaded Odin 3.07 and the new firmware that IS the right one for my phone. I shut off the phone, pulled the battery, put it back in, and put it into download mode. I connected the phone, Odin detected it, I selected the firmware and press start. It took a few minutes and then failed (this was a few days ago, I don't remember the exact error I received). So, I tried again but it kept failing, so I shut off the phone, pulled the battery and turned it on. It booted to the screen with the exclamation mark that says a firmware error occurred and to use Kies to recovery it. I tried using Kies but it wouldn't detect the phone. I ended up using a fix I found that had me flash some file that started with philz_touch something like that. It was from a youtube video called "firmware upgrade encountered an issue for s4 fix".

And that fixed that part, as I could now get back into download/odin mode. When I turn the phone on it just sits at the "Samsung Galaxy S4" screen, no blue light or flashy graphic. It will just sit there forever. Obviously there is a problem so here is what I've tried so far to get Odin to work.

Using Odin 3.07 I tried flashing the firmware ending in NE1. Odin confirmed MD5, but after pressing start only a few seconds later I get "There is no PIT partition"

So I tried to find a PIT file and did. So I shut off the phone, unplugged it, pulled the battery, and put it back into download mode. I closed and reopened Odin 3.07 and used the PIT file I found and the NE1 firmware. This time it failed again within seconds with the error saying "complete(write) operation failed". I have tried 3 different firmwares, with 3 different USB ports, with and without the PIT file, and with both Odin 3.07 and Odin 3.10. I've also tried doing it with my antivirus deactivated. Samsung Kies still won't detect my phone when its connected, but Odin detects it every time.

When I try going into recovery mode I get

"Recovery booting.....

Recovery is not Seandroid enforcing

Set warranty bit : recovery"

It just sits there and nothing happens. Pressing any button does nothing except power as I can shut it off.

So I'm at a complete loss of what to try next. I've tried every solution I could find so I'm hoping someone has a suggestion of what I could try. PLEASE HELP ME!!