[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note II] hugonaut1950:
So like many of you, I have been really frustrated with T Mobile that they are the only carrier not to upgrade their Note 2 to Android 4.4, and they probably never will. There are more an more apps that I cannot run, some of which are important to me. So I gave up with calling T Mobile, and struck out on the custom ROM trail, seeing that CM has a 4.4 mod for this phone. After rooting and attempting to unlock (not necessary) and changing to custom recovery, I managed to get the CM mod loaded and running, after many hours of learning by trying everything, I got the phone running on the CM 4.4 mod, only to find that I could not make any calls, as there are no mods, anywhere, that support T Mobiles WiFi calling. I guess T Mobile uses that because their network is weak, but hey, I have used Sprint, AT&T and Verizon over the years, and every network has holes, especially inside buildings. It so happens that both where I work and at my home is spotty, so I cannot survive as a phone without WiFi calling. After all, for all of the bells and whistles, a Smart Phone is first and foremost a Phone. So after all that, I started on a new trail, unrooting and installing a stock mod.

There are lots of help out here that tell how to unroot and go back to stock, and they are all trash, every one of them. I tried stock mods from several sources (SAMMOBILE and others) and only found two out of six update versions that even functioned on my phone, and only one of those actually worked like it should, and that was the very first 4.1.1 version T889UVALJ1 that came with my phone years ago. No LTE and more apps that would not install at this level. I was hoping to at least get to the T889UVCOH4 version of 4.3, which is the current latest version from T Mobile.So here I was, an older version of ROM on my phone, no LTE, Flash counter not at zero, and Knox telling the world the phone was modified, excluding any chance of help. Why in the world did I even step into these problems. And then I made a startling discovery.

As I tried to at least restore the data backup I did before this whole thing started by using Smart Switch from Samsung, I found that not even that would recognize my phone because of the older version of android so I could not even get to my backups. When I got the phone it used Kies, but with the 4.3 version of android, Samsung changed over to Smart Switch. So at that moment I felt I was completely screwed. Then I saw the little "More" button on the Smart Switch dialog that was telling me my phone was not supported, and I clicked it. It brought me to some other options, and one was emergency recovery, which allowed for an initialization after a failed upgrade. I did not expect much, as my phone was not supported anymore, but I could not see any other option, so I chose to initialize the phone for recovery.

Well guess what, everything ran perfect, and when the process was completed, my phone was just like new, no flash record, no Knox report, a completely authorized phone. It was if I had never rooted it at all, and I had flashed a dozen ROMs. So for everyone that has a bricked or soft bricked Samsung phone or find out the custom ROMs are not what you were hoping for, all you need to do to get it back is install Samsung's Smart Switch on your computer and click the little "more" button on the screen and reinitialize your phone. It will be like the whole rooting and ROM experience was a bad dream, And yes, the backup did load when I was finished. It is that simple. This should work for any Samsung with Android 4.3 or higher on any carrier.