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Help Android Newbie, messed up my phone, badly :S

So, I am an Apple expatriate :p Finally fulfilled my dream after several years and switched to a Samsung Galaxy S4 i337m (with Telus) and within a day of getting it home I messed it right up :S

I guess I didn't realize that any "mods" I would be interested in doing to my phone could be done without rooting the phone and then proceeding to mess it up totally...

Here's what happened basically: (remember, I had never touched an android before and didn't know what I was doing) I rooted the phone, no problem. Then I flashed CyanogenMod onto it. This is where the problems started. I didn't know at the time what custom ROMs are. Having jailbroke my previous iPhone 4S and done a bunch of cool stuff with it, I though I was installing something like Cydia (for a jailbroken iPhone) to help me play around with this rooting I had so successfully achieved...

Well obviously it's not like Cydia. It's a whole new operating system for your phone, and I didn't like it at all. If I had of known what I was doing and could have knowledgeably picked a custom ROM, it would not have been CyanogenMod. I wanted it back to stock and I managed to get it back to stock, sort of... It looked the same pretty much but I had no sound what so ever, no wifi, I couldn't pick up phone calls, when I made a phone call it would call out but the screen would go black and still no sound, it was slow and glitchy, when I went into the settings the phone would lock itself and get all weird..... So I had no idea what to do.

I dropped it off at a repair shop a few days ago. I really hope they can fix it and they don't charge me an arm and a leg. He said he couldn't really give me a price until it was done...

So that's my story! And from now on I'm going to consult a knowledgeable forum community, like this one, before I ever mess with my phone again :p


UPDATE: I got my phone back safe and sound and it works perfectly again :) Really loving this phone this time around lol
 
Thank you for the suggestion RichardSeq! :) Since I dropped my phone off I have done a whole bunch of research on most of those things. Basically all the stuff I should have before I tried anything :p The weirdest part (coming directly from the "walled garden" of Apple) was the vast amount of variety of devices! And how big a difference that made when trying to mod them. I didn't realize that my Galaxy S4 here in Canada was a different model than a Galaxy S4 in another country or with another carrier even. It was extremely difficult (and in the end, not even possible) for me to find a fix for exactly what I had done for my particular model of galaxy AND with my carrier... You can bet I'm learning a lot now! Lol

My journey into the android community so far has not been without painful learning curves! But I'm happy to say I'm going to stick with it and I'm looking forward to a more positive experience in the, hopefully, near future :)
 
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Thank you for the suggestion RichardSeq! :) Since I dropped my phone off I have done a whole bunch of research on most of those things. Basically all the stuff I should have before I tried anything :p The weirdest part (coming directly from the "walled garden" of Apple) was the vast amount of variety of devices! And how big a difference that made when trying to mod them. I didn't realize that my Galaxy S4 here in Canada was a different model than a Galaxy S4 in another country or with another carrier even. It was extremely difficult (and in the end, not even possible) for me to find a fix for exactly what I had done for my particular model of galaxy AND with my carrier... You can bet I'm learning a lot now! Lol

My journey into the android community so far has not been without painful learning curves! But I'm happy to say I'm going to stick with it and I'm looking forward to a more positive experience in the, hopefully, near future :)


I can speak from experience when I say that this is the BEST place to go for root questions. I got into rooting a little over a year ago and the folks on here have been a TREMENDOUS help. Don't be afraid to ask questions and seek out veteran root users. They've helped me with my s3 and now with my s4. Definitely stick with it like you said: once you get the concepts and basics of root mods you will have a lot of fun with your phone :)
 
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