[Samsung Galaxy Exhibit 4G] masteff:
By soft bricked, in my situation, I mean that the only mode I could successfully enter on my SGH-T679 was ODIN download. Recovery and normal boot both locked up no matter how long the phone was allowed to run. Or it reported that firmware failed and to use Kies but Kies failed to recognize the phone.

How I bricked it

I was given one of those fitness wrist bands for Xmas, but it's from a startup company and their app only works in 4.3 or higher. So I got adventurous and tried CM 10.2. I got CM to run but couldn't get Google services to work. I finally gave up and started to revert to stock. When I had my first problem at 2am, I should have gone to bed and finished after a good night's sleep because I soft bricked it. At first, I was running flashes from my internal SD card and could only get it to flip between stock recovery and CWM recovery, it wouldn't take full stock flash. Finally, one CWM recovery flash failed and my recovery mode got stuck so it only showed the hat and gear icon and at the bottom of the screen it said "CWM 6.etc..." and never went further. But I could still get to ODIN download mode.

And that's when I got really stupid. I messed with things I didn't understand in ODIN. Did you know that if you try to run ODIN Multidownloader 4.43 using the "Debug Only" and "MD5 Ram Check" options that you can fully soft brick a T679? If allowed to run for a while (10-20 minutes is sufficient), then after forcing the phone to restart, it will result in the screen about firmware failed please use Kies for recovery (but then Kies can't see the phone because the recovery is bricked).

Long story short, after hours of trying this and that, I finally found a webpage that said you can download the CWM recovery via ODIN. That would have worked if I hadn't gotten the wrong version (resulting in lots of screen flickering), but it proved to me that I might be able to fix the recovery using ODIN.

Here's the walk thru of how I restored my stock recovery and ultimately got back to stock ROM:

Software required:

A zip software that can handle TAR files (I used PeaZip)

Go to this wiki http://xdaforums.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Exhibit_4G and scroll down to "Flash to stock via ODIN", you need the software discussed and read thru the "STEPS" section just below that

You can first try using ODIN as described in the wiki. But if that doesn't work, you can try what I did...

Restoring stock recovery

If you haven't already, unzip the uvlg3.odin.zip file that you got via the wiki link above

From the .tar file that was in the zip, extract recovery.img and then put it inside a new TAR file (call it something easy like recovery.tar) (depending on your zip program, use "add", do not use "convert", you need the .img file inside the .tar file)

Refer to the wiki link above for more help on ODIN but basic steps are:

- Run ODIN as admin (not sure if it matters if you disable auto-protect on your antivirus software but I followed that recommendation)

- Using "OPS" button, select the Ancora.ops file that you extracted from the zip file

- You may have to recheck the "One Package" box to be able to then select your recovery.tar using "One Package" button

- Press "Start" and cross your fingers

You hopefully have now restored the stock recovery to your phone.

Further steps

I went a step further. I extracted the entire .tar file (not just the recovery image) and put each item into its own new .tar file. I used ODIN to individually load each item. I did first try to load the full file but I now think mine was failing to load system (which is pretty critical, especially if you followed directions that included "format /system"). (Note, the preload file might not work, didn't for me ; I found several posts about it and the general answer was to ignore it.) One trick to this is to watch and push the Vol Down and Home buttons when ODIN reboots the phone so you go back into download mode. Oh, and change the reset time to 30 seconds (I tried 1 but ODIN changed it to 30) so you don't wait as long on "reset". I'm not sure if it would have made my first normal boot go faster if I'd gone to recovery mode between ODIN downloads. I do know it took my phone several minutes on the first normal boot. I'm sure those of you who have bricked phones can appreciate the feeling of waiting for the stupid startup jingle and the relief when it actually plays.

Oh, and save yourself some bother by rebooting 2 or 3 times before you try to do much w/ your phone once you get back to stock ROM (or some other ROM). I was a little freaked because my wifi didn't work but after some googling, I learned Android can require a couple reboots before all services (especially wifi) load properly (which makes me wonder if I should try CM 10.2 again with more reboots... am I a glutton for punishment enough to try???).