Root [GUIDE][CTmod] Rooting the Prevail [SPH-M820] for Dummies (written by a dummy)

I believe it's a class 4 16G. Thanks for the links I'll read them now.

I have a problem, I when I flash cwm bia Odin it says it was a success but when I try to go into recovery it doesn't let me. It show the stock recovery instead of cwm, can someone help me with this?

Oops, forget what I wrote, wrong phone section, was looking for galaxy rush. Got use to always coming here when in problems, but I lost my prevail, have a rush now.

I also found the solution to my problem by reading what you put that I have to check autoreboot off, and take the battery off and also unplug it, then try to go into cwm

So thanks!

does anyone have a video of this step by step? Seems very confusing to me.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and I really need it rooted bad the service is with US Cellular, worst company to get a phone through, after this contract never again! and I have an GalaxyS3 to root help!

I have downloaded the latest rooted image (FF19) a couple of times and it appears to be corrupt. Does anyone have a confirmed good copy?
Thank you!
FP

First off thank you so much for this guide. It made rooting my phone extremely easy. I am on chapter 3 where I am to save the CTO zip file to my SD card via my computer. I connect the cable from my phone to my PC and the phone detects the conection. I touch the "turn on USB storage" button, but on my PC's end I do not see my phone as a drive for me to save the files. Do you have any suggestions?


Thanks.

slashsoloist said:

First off thank you so much for this guide. It made rooting my phone extremely easy. I am on chapter 3 where I am to save the CTO zip file to my SD card via my computer. I connect the cable from my phone to my PC and the phone detects the conection. I touch the "turn on USB storage" button, but on my PC's end I do not see my phone as a drive for me to save the files. Do you have any suggestions?


Thanks.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the forums
Try going into settings/applications/development and make sure usb debugging is checked and try reinstalling the drivers on the pc.

Thank you sir. The usb debugging box is checked on. I will try reinstalling the drivers when I get home, and will post my results.

Thank you.

I was able to get my PC to recognize my phone. I reinstalled the drivers, and unchecked the usb debugging box. Thank you for your help.

Thank you. Installing the drivers and unchecking the usb debugging box worked.


Take care.

slashsoloist said:

Thank you. Installing the drivers and unchecking the usb debugging box worked.


Take care.

Click to expand...

Glad you got it all working

First off, Thanks to all that worked on this!

I've rooted my Prevail m820 with factory 2gb card using this guide. Everything seems to have worked fine on first try. My phone is slower than it's ever been, lots of lag in between everything. I'm able to get new apps and change lots of settings, but it takes a while. Feels like I'm using a dial up modem.



I used:
FF19 Gingerbread Rooted by Koumajutsu
CLOCKWORKMOD 5027 UPDATE FIXED

512mb partitioned
Data mode

please? someone? fe 19 doesn't work.
tia

bill

FE19 is also very old..... May wanna try FF19 or FE16 ( very stable )

vce2005 said:

FE19 is also very old..... May wanna try FF19 or FE16 ( very stable )

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Lordvincent 90 said:

They messaged me. I gave them a link for FE16 hopefully they get it sorted

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Great to see you guys are still in here helping people out. :thumbup:

Nice to see that you got your spare phone hooked up, VCE. The Boost website makes it pretty easy to update your handset. The hardest part is reading the numbers in the battery bay. lol

Hi Wetbiker,

well, so far I didn't need to switch phones, but since I run into a couple problems lately ( mainly with battery and charging on the main phone, I was told that maybe the charging port is going bad ) I might need to switch to the other phone, however, not even sure if I want to activate my second Prevail, might just get me a Galaxy S3 from Boost..... Maybe even for me time to get a bigger display.... not getting younger ! Grinzzzzzz

fonthiller said:

Rooted w/ the FF19 files. Everything in terms of using the ODIN seemed to go smoothly. But while the phone has Gmail, it doesn't have Maps or Play Store / Play Store services. ... I figured that a restored OS would still have the basic Google services. Apparently not?

Click to expand...

Hello,

I am confused by the above.

I thought there was a way to root Samsung Galaxy Prevail, SPH-M820-BST, using Odin, without changing anything, except rooting it.

In fact, I use Maps and Navigation, stock apps that came with my phone, heavily, and I have read that subsequent versions of Maps are not as good as older versions, like the version I am running. So, I really don't want to use a rooted image from which Maps, etc., has been removed. Moreover, I really do not have adequate bandwidth and Internet access, to download a lot of stuff from Google PlayStore.

I don't want a different ROM or a different kernel. I want everything about my phone to be stock, except it is rooted. I also do not want to repartition the SD card for use as internal storage.

So, after reading a lot about rooting a Samsung Galaxy Prevail for many months, and in recent days, I came to the above quote and, again, began to rethink whether I should proceed to root my Samsung Galaxy Prevail, or not.

Is there any rooted image, for use with Odin, for SPH-M820-BST, that has not had any apps, or anything else, removed?

Lordvincent 90 said:

Chapter two: Clockworkmod

ClockWorkMod v5.0.2.7 for Samsung Prevail SPH-M820

Now after all those minutes of work, we've got ourselves a phone that looks remarkably similar to what we had before. Only real difference is now there's a one-eyed android in our app drawer named Superuser. If we wanted to, we could stop here and delete the stupid stuff boost forced upon us. ... This recovery utility allows us to install roms and kernels, make backups, create partitions, all directly on the phone. And the best part is, we've already installed it!

In this section we will make a backup of the phone, repartition the SD card, and install a custom rom.

Click to expand...

I do want to stop there, is what I mean. No custom ROMS, no custom kernels, no SD card partitions; I don't want to do any of that right now.

I do want to make a backup of my entire phone, that can be used to restore it; however, I would like to make a stock(RFS) backup and I would like to be able to easily restore that stock(RFS) backup. What free apps are available that will make a stock(RFS) backup of my entire phone and restore that stock(RFS) backup?

What I would really like to do is make a restorable backup of my entire phone, before rooting. But, from reading, it seems, to me, that such a backup is only possible on a rooted phone. I read about, and downloaded, "Odin Image File Creator 4.0", but even that, it seems, only works on a rooted phone. This seems to imply that I really can't ever restore the phone, after rooting it, to precisely the way it was before rooting, because I can't even make such a backup, before rooting the phone.

I have 2 Samsung Galaxy Prevails SPH-M820-BST. I got them both a long time ago. One of them is activated with Boost and it is, very literally, my only means of making phone calls and my only means of accessing the Internet; so, the phone is critically important to me, daily. The second phone is not activated.

Ultimately, I want to root my activated phone, but, I guess, I will root the non-activated phone first; in case something goes wrong with the rooting procedure. I really can not afford to break or lose either of the phones, but, considering, it seems most logical to try rooting the non-activated phone first.

Another concern is that one of my phones, the activated one, is FA19 and the other phone is FF19.

My activated non-rooted FA19 Boost Samsung Galaxy Prevail has, and still does, worked extremely well for me. In other words, I have read forum posts where a lot of people say they rooted their Prevail, because they were experiencing significant problems with it non-rooted; I have not been experiencing significant problems with my non-rooted Prevail, however. I am only rooting because I want to use a number of apps that require rooting for use with Gingerbread 2.3.6, which my phones run. Those apps include a data compression app and a firewall. I also want to remove some pre-installed apps, but I will consider that more carefully, later. So, unless someone can suggest otherwise, I don't think I even want to switch from FA19, to something more recent.

I am really trying to being as cautious as I can be in rooting the phone, because, in just about every Prevail rooting forum I have read I have, unfortunately, read of a number of people who have encountered problems that incapacitated their phone, as a result of trying to root:

I have read of people who have rooted their Prevail and ended up with problems such as:

• gps issues
• erratic phone behaviour(freezing, crashing, etc.)
• camera no longer works
• can't receive or send text messages. This was particulary problematic, because, apparently, the phone was indicating texts were sent when they were, in fact, not sent. In another case I read, after rooting texts could not be received from anyone not also using the exact same carrier(Boost, I think).
• bluetooth stopped working
• usb stopped working

and on and on.

I use all the features, including the aforementioned ones, heavily, especially bluetooth, gps and Maps, and USB. So, I am trying to determine if I can root my phone in an extremely cautious way; in the hopes of avoiding Prevail rooting issues I have read of others encountering.

From what I read, a lot of people, for whatever reasons, seem to run into problems rooting with a repartitioned SD card; so, I don't want to do that.

It also seems, from what I read, like a lot of people run into problems rooting and flashing ROMS and installing new kernels; so, I don't want to do that.

I just want to do the minimum, simplest, procedure I can to root my Samsung Galaxy Prevail SPH-M820-BST.

• No flashing Roms
• No installing kernels
• No partitioning SD card to move internal storage to SD card

I downloaded Odin version 1.85, because the Odin forum, which listed which version of Odin to use with specific phones, listed Samsung Galaxy Prevail under Odin version 1.85

I found a working link for FF19, but I am not entirely sure if that is a stock, rooted, FF19, with no apps removed. I am still looking for a working link for FA19.

I also have another very important question to ask, but I will wait to see if the questions I have asked in this post are answered, first.

Samsung Galaxy Prevail
Boost Mobile
model: SPH-M820-BST
android version: 2.3.6
baseband version: S:M820.07x.FA19
kernel version: 2.6.35.7
build number: Gingerbread.FA19
hardware version: M820.07

vce2005 said:

Hi Wetbiker,

well, so far I didn't need to switch phones, but since I run into a couple problems lately ( mainly with battery and charging on the main phone, I was told that maybe the charging port is going bad ) I might need to switch to the other phone, however, not even sure if I want to activate my second Prevail, might just get me a Galaxy S3 from Boost..... Maybe even for me time to get a bigger display.... not getting younger ! Grinzzzzzz

Click to expand...

Bro, you'd love the S3. We have some insane 4.4.2 AOSP ROMs and some 4.3 TouchWiz ROMs. In the past month I've ran 2 excellent ROMs. Liquidsmooth and AOKP are fully functional along with many, many more.

The big stink right now is the newest KitKat update and that it trips Knox on the bootloader. Not really a big deal with me. My phone didn't come with KitKat so I didn't have Knox to begin with. I haven't tripped the flag because I haven't needed to. AOSP has had KitKat running for quite awhile now. When I do decide to flash one of the new TouchWiz ROMs, I will have to upgrade and allow Knox to be tripped. As of right now there is no way around it. Possibly in the future but not ATM. After much thought on the subject, I'm not worried about it at all. As long as I pay attention, read and follow the proper flashing procedures, I need not worry.

Besides the S3, Boost has some other nice phones in their lineup. The S5 is getting ready to be released. I'm sure that booger is going to be pricey though!! lol

One thing's for sure..... I'm not going anywhere for a year or so. I'm sticking with my S3. It's plenty fast and does everything I need it to do. I've bought a USB OTG cable which is a very nice piece of equipment to have. It has a male and female power plug so I'm able to hook up to just about anything.