MTMichaelson - Thank you so much for this, when I get out of my financial rut I will donate whatever I am able to.
First of all it is amazing that you came up with this, many, many, many thanks. Double thanks for such a wonderful guide.
Not wanting to take anything away from it, since it is simple to the point.
However as a newbie, I was unaware of several things, that caused a lot of pain headache and endless googling to figure out.
And also getting the sequence of events just right.
There are also some nuances that will help the technically challenged.
Preliminary, pre-requisite steps to insure a smooth operation
1) Make sure the correct drivers are installed.
What does that actually mean?
At first I thought it meant, that when you plugin the USB cord the computer automatically detects the drivers and installs them.
Yes that is partially true, but that's not ALL drivers.
On my Pantech, I had to do something else.
First of all you may need to try different USB ports on your computer until this next step pops up.
As soon as the USB is plugged in, an Auto-Play popup should display, the first item says something like
"E: BootLoader"
where E is whatever drive letter your computer assigned to your phone.
I clicked this, and it prompted some Verizon installation.
THESE are the drivers that are needed.
If that doesn't happen, then your computer has not loaded the correct drivers for your phone, and you will not be able to proceed.
I would recommend you call your phone provider or manufacturer to help sync your phone with the computer.
2) The zip files mentioned in the post (Root and Unroot), that you download, need to be physically transferred over to your phone's
SD Card. Without this, you can't flash the phone.
Select the USB Debugging mode via the Phone Settings -> Application -> Development.
Go into mass storage mode, and check Windows Explorer to make sure your phone shows up as a drive in My Computer.
Then drag and drop the Root and Unroot zip files from your computer to your phone's SD card folder.
When #1 and #2 have been done and resolved then you can proceed with the instructions as normal.
You just keep pressing "Next key" until the prompt tells you it has been installed.
Then your Pantech will be on a black screen that says something like "Android Development Mode......Fastboot yadda yadda..."
3) I did not know a couple of things WTF does flash mean. Flash the phone, flash the root, flash the zip file. flash <this> ;-)
j/k. I also did not know what Battery Pull or pull the Battery meant.
4) So once you get to the black screen "Android Development mode, etc" and the CVW has finished the install, unplug the USB cable
from the phone and the computer.
At this point no communication is required between the computer and phone. That chapter is over.
5) So with the black Android development mode screen on your Pantech, this is what a Battery Pull means.
With the Phone still on, you take the battery out. Then you wait 30 seconds, and put the Battery back in.
5 a) Next is important --- now to power the phone back on, Press the Power Button and Search key simultaneously.
Be careful not to press any other key by mistake, like I did the first 4 times, otherwise the phone will boot up and you will have
to start from Square 1 again. This has been described and explained perfectly in all the other posts. You hold it through the Pantech
splash screen. If you see a Verizon or 4GLTE screen, then go directly to jail. ;-) Means you have to start over.
6) So ok I'll attempt to explain what "flash the file" means.
When you are in the root recovery mode of your phone (dos or unix looking text with options), there is an option to load and install a zip file that is on your SD card.
If you got here that means you inherit the factory and will go on a glass elevator trip with Willy Wonka to the land of the Oompa Loompas.
You will see a command line looking options, and you are in root.
One of the options in the root menu says something about install from sd
and also install zip from sd, or something to that effect.
You select that option, and then it shows you the file structure of the sd file and you find the appropriate zip file that you
copied over from teh computer.
You will get confirmation that it completed successfully.
press the back button to go back to the main menu and reboot.
7) One thing I did separately from this was to install the SuperUser app from the marketplace.
Once I rebooted as root, I opened this application, and in preferences selected the option to Su from binary.
8) I downloaded and used Titanium Backup to remove my Verizon crapware. The only way this worked was when I was rooted, and then opened
the SuperUser app and did the su binary thing. Then I opened the Titanium Backup up, it prompts you that you are using
super user privileges. Then it lets you uninstall protected and system apps.
Hope this helps and offers some more clarification to users who were stuck or confused like me.
