**The problem as it stands**
My Galaxy S6 Active is stuck in a sort of bootloop, except it never seems to attempt a boot. If it was turning on, without any combination of keys, it would go to the "No Command" screen. From there all I can do is force reset (power + volume down) to get it to restart to the same place or as it displays the Samsung splash screen, press volume up + power + home, it goes to the download screen. From the download screen, I can use my pc to flash a rom (that may not be correct) to the device and according to Odin, that is a success but my device freezes on "erasing".
Imgur album with pictures of the accessible screens (http://imgur.com/a/Rd9ND)
**Description of the problem when it was booting**
At seemingly random times, the device would freeze and the only way to get it to do anything was to reset it. Sometimes it would enter a bootloop but through key combinations, I would be able to get it out. One time after a bootloop, I had the sense to back up the device's storage, so luckily I have that.
**What I've done**
- I have tried wiping the storage in device recovery -- when it was accessible, I can no longer get to it.
- I have tried using Kies/Smart Switch emergency software recovery -- but when provided with the model name and serial number they would both crash.
- When the device booted, I tried using the standard recovery feature in Smart Switch. I can't remember the exact message but it was something along the lines of "This device does not support initializing"
- I have tried using Odin to flash ROMs (again, I may be using this incorrectly) to the device. I have only tried Samsung release ROMs, meaning ones that have not been modified by a 3rd party. I followed the second and third methods of a guide on XDA forums (https://forum.xda-developers.com/ga...e/downloading-flashing-att-galaxy-s6-t3260744). Odin never throws an error and it always says it was successful. During the device's initialization with this new ROM, it gets to 32% then goes to "Erasing". A few seconds later the animation freezes. I can leave the device here for hours but nothing happens. So I believe more than the animation is frozen.
- I tried using ADB recovery via the device's recovery mode (when it was accessible) but from what I can gather, Samsung uses a proprietary ADB interface that would not work with what I was trying to do (I was following method 3 of the previously mentioned guide (https://forum.xda-developers.com/ga...e/downloading-flashing-att-galaxy-s6-t3260744). I would always get a message saying "ADB server out of date".
I may have done more than that but that's what I can recall.
Any help would be appreciated. Even if you know of a better place to post this, let me know.
Thanks
My s6 active did the same thing on 08/24/17. I have not yet found a solution.
Related
To start off, I suffered, what seems to be a common problem, of the fingerprint unlock on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge randomly being unable to recognise my fingerprint. Followed by my back-up password not being accepted. Unfortunately, I turned off my data and wifi before the phone locked so the problem doesn't seem to be able to resolve itself unless I Factory Reset the phone.
This i am happy to do as long as I can find some way to retrieve the media files from the phone (just pictures and videos). I read up and watched some videos where some people were able to use ADB through Recovery Mode or Field Test mode, and pull the files from the phone. These people however were using older models of Android phones but I decided to read numerous pages etc and go ahead and try.
I set up everything (I believe) i needed on my Mac Book pro in order to use the Adb Terminal. However when I tried to connect my phone Adb couldn't detect my device. I then decided (after reading somewhere to do so) to press "Apply update using ADB" on the Recovery menu. Again, Adb did not detect my device.
i left this screen up on my phone which resulted in "dm-verity verification failed..." appearing at the bottom of the screen. It then switched back to the Recovery menu and continues to show "dm-verity verification failed..." at the base of the screen. Now when I try and power up the phone normally, the start up screen just repeatedly flashes and it goes no further than that.
Im not completely brain dead when it comes to this stuff but I obviously don't fully understand what I am doing, So Im wondering if there is a genius out there who, even after what I've done, can help me pull the files from my phone before I have to Factory Reset!
To start off, I suffered, what seems to be a common problem, of the fingerprint unlock on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge randomly being unable to recognise my fingerprint. Followed by my back-up password not being accepted. Unfortunately, I turned off my data and wifi before the phone locked so the problem doesn't seem to be able to resolve itself unless I Factory Reset the phone.
This i am happy to do as long as I can find some way to retrieve the media files from the phone (just pictures and videos). I read up and watched some videos where some people were able to use ADB through Recovery Mode or Field Test mode, and pull the files from the phone. These people however were using older models of Android phones but I decided to read numerous pages etc and go ahead and try.
I set up everything (I believe) i needed on my Mac Book pro in order to use the Adb Terminal. However when I tried to connect my phone Adb couldn't detect my device. I then decided (after reading somewhere to do so) to press "Apply update using ADB" on the Recovery menu. Again, Adb did not detect my device.
i left this screen up on my phone which resulted in "dm-verity verification failed..." appearing at the bottom of the screen. It then switched back to the Recovery menu and continues to show "dm-verity verification failed..." at the base of the screen. Now when I try and power up the phone normally, the start up screen just repeatedly flashes and it goes no further than that.
Im not completely brain dead when it comes to this stuff but I obviously don't fully understand what I am doing, So Im wondering if there is a genius out there who, even after what I've done, can help me pull the files from my phone before I have to Factory Reset!
The problem is, that you don't have the ability to use adb pull through the stock recovery. This kind of thing can only be done via a custom recovery like TWRP, CWM, or Philz. Now that it's not booting, pretty much the only thing to try is to install a custom recovery and boot directly into it before it tries to restart. Make sure you find one for the correct variant of your phone. If yours is a VZW or ATT version, you're in trouble because they don't have custom recoveries like that for them.
Hello dear users of xda.
I have read alot of threads on several forums to find a fix for my broken phone, since I am hoping that the problem is caused by the software, rather than the hardware.
Sadly I was not able to find the fix yet and therefor you guys are my last shot at this issue. This account is also freshly registered, so I will not be able to post any links or images to help you guys out understanding what happened ... so please just bear with me here
Since I am from Germany I hope you can also excuse small mistakes regarding my writing in this thread. Thank you in advance
Lets dive right into this with a few details:
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge (SM-G925F)
Never rooted, flashed -> always official updates
Android 7 was up to date
Phone has no branding or any kind of simlock
What happened:
My phone was turned off a few days ago when I woke up. Since I always charge it over night it couldnt be out of power and that confused me.
I then pressed the On/Off-Button to start it and the phone booted up.
But the boot did get stuck on the Samung logo-animation. I mean the animation which is usually displayed after the big "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge powered by Android".
I waited a minute or something and nothing happened, it seemed like the boot froze up and I turned it off.
When I booted it up again the samsung animation would not even finish and then freeze up. The animation is displaying the letters from left to right and it froze this time displaying only "Samsu".
After that I plugged the phone back into the wall to charge and went to the PC to google this issue. The phone displayed around 25% battery when I plugged it in.
So apparently it was not charging this night?
Anyways ... after googling and not finding any similiar problems I tryed to boot with Safe Mode ( holding Volume Down + On/Off Button .... no success) and then downloaded Samsung Switch and all drivers needed to get a device connected to the PC.
I connected the phone to the PC with an original Samsung cable and Samsung Switch was not showing anything until I entered the Download Mode on my phone by pressing Volume Down + Home + On/Off.
Then Samsung Switch displayed that the connected device was not compatible (even though it meets all requirements).
I went to the device manager to make sure that the drivers are working and the phone indeed was showing up in the list. It also disappeared properly when I unplugged it from the PC.
After that I again tryed out to boot the phone several times. It would always freeze up anywhere within that Samsung animation.
Not knowing what to do I thought an factory reset might help out and I pressed Volume Up + Home + On/Off for several seconds when the phone was turned off.
Nothing happened. I could only boot up the phone by pressing the On/Off button alone and by doing that it always froze up. Just the Download-Mode was accessable (Volume Down + Home + On/Off).
Since I had no way to recover or reset anything by using Samsung Switch or the Recovery Mode I decided to flash an official Samsung rom on the device using ODIN.
I downloaded the following:
Odin ( v3.12.3 )
Firmware ( G925FXXU5EQK8_G925FDBT5EQK1_G925FXXU5EQKF_HOME.tar.md5 // from a german android forum, information below )
FIRMWARE INFORMATION
Model: SM-G925F
Model name: Galaxy S6 edge
Country: Germany (DBT)
Version: Android 7.0
Changelist: 10958180
Build date: Thu, 09 Nov 2017 10:08:50
Android security patch level: 2017-11-01
Product code: DBT
PDA: G925FXXU5EQK8
CSC: G925FDBT5EQK1
When I connected the phone Odin was recognizing the device and I was able to flash the firmware successfully. Odin did not display any kind of errors.
After the flash the phone was still connected to the PC since I feared it would run out of power. I know that the first boot after a flash can take a while. Since the LED was flashing while the big "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge" logo was displayed I thought it was doing something in the background. I kept it like this (big logo, LED flashing, plugged into the PC) for over an hour and nothing did change. The device was warm but I doubted that it's doing anything since one hour for a boot, even after flashing, is way too long.
After that hour I turned it off and it instantly started to boot up again, but this time and all the other times after that it kept getting stuck at the big logo. It did not proceed into the animation like before.
I tested if I could enter the Recovery Mode at this point but it still was only able to get into the Download Mode.
The only way to stop it from trying to boot now was to get into that Download Mode, else it would just keep looping around, but not turn off by its own.
Every now and then, instead of displaying the big logo, it showed a blue screen with a yellow warning sign and the android mascot laying on the ground with "No command" beneath it. If you want to see how it looks you can google images "android 7.0 no command" and look for the full blue screen pictures.
Googling this blue screen with no command said that it can be easily fixed by wiping the data/cache from your device. But as I said the recovery mode was not showing up when I pressed the buttons for it. So a friend of mine suggested using ADB or fastboot to wipe the cache / dalvik cache.
Using both (ADB + fastboot) the device was not detected. We made sure that the drivers were installed properly. There was and there still is no way to connect to the phone with these both tools. Sadly.
After the first try of using ADB/fastboot we decided that the issue might have been the firmware I downloaded in the beginning and we used SamFirm (v0.3.6) to download the newest firmware for my SM-G925F ( G925FXXU5EQK8_G925FDBT5EQK1_G925FXXU5EQKF_HOME.tar.md5 )
This firmware appears to be the same as the one I downloaded before, but this one was slightly bigger.
This is a paste of the SamFirm window:
Checking firmware for SM-G925F/DBT/G925FXXU5EQK8/G925FDBT5EQK1/G925FXXU5EQKF/G925FXXU5EQK8
Model: SM-G925F
Version: G925FXXU5EQK8/G925FDBT5EQK1/G925FXXU5EQKF/G925FXXU5EQK8
OS: Nougat(Android 7.0)
Filename: SM-G925F_1_20171129140113_g7auy18e0c.zip.enc4
Size: 1950442496 bytes
LogicValue: 8ikzg48ul7hryauq
The flash was again successfull and still the same problem remained: no full boot.... sometimes a blue no command mascot.
After that we flashed again but with another PIT file attached. At first we got an error after the hidden.img but after changing the PIT file to this one ( ZEROLTE_EUR_OPEN_HIDDEN300M ) it worked again without any errors displayed by Odin. Apparently the PIT file we used at first did not have enough space for our hidden.img ...
We flashed that firmware several times and sometimes after the flash there would be a blue screen with an android mascot saying it is erasing, but the animation of that mascot freezes also after 10 to 20 seconds. I've kept the phone in this blue screen for several hours (up to 5h I think) since a few forum threads said that it sometimes takes very long to work and the LED was actually flashing all the time, but nothing changed.
We did not try to flash anything else because the Reactivation Lock is enabled and I have no idea how to turn this thing off w/o booting the device.
I would not mind flashing a custom firmware on the device as long as it just works again. So if this is somehow possible and might be a solution I am up for it.
What currenctly is going on with the phone:
· It only turns completly off when the power runs out.
· No button combination is working to turn it off.
· I can enter Download Mode easily but I can not enter the Factory Reset Mode.
Within the Download Mode it says:
ODIN MODE
Product Name: SM-G925F
Current Binary: Samsung Official
System Status: Official
Reactivation Lock: On
Secure Download: Enabled
KNOX Warranty Void: 0 (0x0000)
RP SWREV: B:5 K:2 S:2
· The boot ends either up with showing an "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge powered by Android" logo for the whole time (kept it like that for several hours, no boot)
· or with a blue screen (yellow warning sign, android mascot laying on the ground and a "no command" beneath it).
· Odin is recognizing it as a device.
· The device manager is recognizing the device.
· Samsung Switch is saying the device is not compatible.
· ADB/fastboot can not detect the device.
So ... is it possible to get this damn thing to work again or is it gone for good?
If you still got any questions regarding the current state of the phone please ask. I will try to reply ASAP.
Thank you very much for any reply you guys might throw at me.
It sounds like a hardware fault and your phone is kaput.
Interesting.I would love to open the phone to inspect it
FaKeT said:
Hello dear users of xda.
I have read alot of threads on several forums to find a fix for my broken phone, since I am hoping that the problem is caused by the software, rather than the hardware.
Sadly I was not able to find the fix yet and therefor you guys are my last shot at this issue. This account is also freshly registered, so I will not be able to post any links or images to help you guys out understanding what happened ... so please just bear with me here
Since I am from Germany I hope you can also excuse small mistakes regarding my writing in this thread. Thank you in advance
Lets dive right into this with a few details:
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge (SM-G925F)
Never rooted, flashed -> always official updates
Android 7 was up to date
Phone has no branding or any kind of simlock
What happened:
My phone was turned off a few days ago when I woke up. Since I always charge it over night it couldnt be out of power and that confused me.
I then pressed the On/Off-Button to start it and the phone booted up.
But the boot did get stuck on the Samung logo-animation. I mean the animation which is usually displayed after the big "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge powered by Android".
I waited a minute or something and nothing happened, it seemed like the boot froze up and I turned it off.
When I booted it up again the samsung animation would not even finish and then freeze up. The animation is displaying the letters from left to right and it froze this time displaying only "Samsu".
After that I plugged the phone back into the wall to charge and went to the PC to google this issue. The phone displayed around 25% battery when I plugged it in.
So apparently it was not charging this night?
Anyways ... after googling and not finding any similiar problems I tryed to boot with Safe Mode ( holding Volume Down + On/Off Button .... no success) and then downloaded Samsung Switch and all drivers needed to get a device connected to the PC.
I connected the phone to the PC with an original Samsung cable and Samsung Switch was not showing anything until I entered the Download Mode on my phone by pressing Volume Down + Home + On/Off.
Then Samsung Switch displayed that the connected device was not compatible (even though it meets all requirements).
I went to the device manager to make sure that the drivers are working and the phone indeed was showing up in the list. It also disappeared properly when I unplugged it from the PC.
After that I again tryed out to boot the phone several times. It would always freeze up anywhere within that Samsung animation.
Not knowing what to do I thought an factory reset might help out and I pressed Volume Up + Home + On/Off for several seconds when the phone was turned off.
Nothing happened. I could only boot up the phone by pressing the On/Off button alone and by doing that it always froze up. Just the Download-Mode was accessable (Volume Down + Home + On/Off).
Since I had no way to recover or reset anything by using Samsung Switch or the Recovery Mode I decided to flash an official Samsung rom on the device using ODIN.
I downloaded the following:
Odin ( v3.12.3 )
Firmware ( G925FXXU5EQK8_G925FDBT5EQK1_G925FXXU5EQKF_HOME.tar.md5 // from a german android forum, information below )
FIRMWARE INFORMATION
Model: SM-G925F
Model name: Galaxy S6 edge
Country: Germany (DBT)
Version: Android 7.0
Changelist: 10958180
Build date: Thu, 09 Nov 2017 10:08:50
Android security patch level: 2017-11-01
Product code: DBT
PDA: G925FXXU5EQK8
CSC: G925FDBT5EQK1
When I connected the phone Odin was recognizing the device and I was able to flash the firmware successfully. Odin did not display any kind of errors.
After the flash the phone was still connected to the PC since I feared it would run out of power. I know that the first boot after a flash can take a while. Since the LED was flashing while the big "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge" logo was displayed I thought it was doing something in the background. I kept it like this (big logo, LED flashing, plugged into the PC) for over an hour and nothing did change. The device was warm but I doubted that it's doing anything since one hour for a boot, even after flashing, is way too long.
After that hour I turned it off and it instantly started to boot up again, but this time and all the other times after that it kept getting stuck at the big logo. It did not proceed into the animation like before.
I tested if I could enter the Recovery Mode at this point but it still was only able to get into the Download Mode.
The only way to stop it from trying to boot now was to get into that Download Mode, else it would just keep looping around, but not turn off by its own.
Every now and then, instead of displaying the big logo, it showed a blue screen with a yellow warning sign and the android mascot laying on the ground with "No command" beneath it. If you want to see how it looks you can google images "android 7.0 no command" and look for the full blue screen pictures.
Googling this blue screen with no command said that it can be easily fixed by wiping the data/cache from your device. But as I said the recovery mode was not showing up when I pressed the buttons for it. So a friend of mine suggested using ADB or fastboot to wipe the cache / dalvik cache.
Using both (ADB + fastboot) the device was not detected. We made sure that the drivers were installed properly. There was and there still is no way to connect to the phone with these both tools. Sadly.
After the first try of using ADB/fastboot we decided that the issue might have been the firmware I downloaded in the beginning and we used SamFirm (v0.3.6) to download the newest firmware for my SM-G925F ( G925FXXU5EQK8_G925FDBT5EQK1_G925FXXU5EQKF_HOME.tar.md5 )
This firmware appears to be the same as the one I downloaded before, but this one was slightly bigger.
This is a paste of the SamFirm window:
Checking firmware for SM-G925F/DBT/G925FXXU5EQK8/G925FDBT5EQK1/G925FXXU5EQKF/G925FXXU5EQK8
Model: SM-G925F
Version: G925FXXU5EQK8/G925FDBT5EQK1/G925FXXU5EQKF/G925FXXU5EQK8
OS: Nougat(Android 7.0)
Filename: SM-G925F_1_20171129140113_g7auy18e0c.zip.enc4
Size: 1950442496 bytes
LogicValue: 8ikzg48ul7hryauq
The flash was again successfull and still the same problem remained: no full boot.... sometimes a blue no command mascot.
After that we flashed again but with another PIT file attached. At first we got an error after the hidden.img but after changing the PIT file to this one ( ZEROLTE_EUR_OPEN_HIDDEN300M ) it worked again without any errors displayed by Odin. Apparently the PIT file we used at first did not have enough space for our hidden.img ...
We flashed that firmware several times and sometimes after the flash there would be a blue screen with an android mascot saying it is erasing, but the animation of that mascot freezes also after 10 to 20 seconds. I've kept the phone in this blue screen for several hours (up to 5h I think) since a few forum threads said that it sometimes takes very long to work and the LED was actually flashing all the time, but nothing changed.
We did not try to flash anything else because the Reactivation Lock is enabled and I have no idea how to turn this thing off w/o booting the device.
I would not mind flashing a custom firmware on the device as long as it just works again. So if this is somehow possible and might be a solution I am up for it.
What currenctly is going on with the phone:
· It only turns completly off when the power runs out.
· No button combination is working to turn it off.
· I can enter Download Mode easily but I can not enter the Factory Reset Mode.
Within the Download Mode it says:
ODIN MODE
Product Name: SM-G925F
Current Binary: Samsung Official
System Status: Official
Reactivation Lock: On
Secure Download: Enabled
KNOX Warranty Void: 0 (0x0000)
RP SWREV: B:5 K:2 S:2
· The boot ends either up with showing an "Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge powered by Android" logo for the whole time (kept it like that for several hours, no boot)
· or with a blue screen (yellow warning sign, android mascot laying on the ground and a "no command" beneath it).
· Odin is recognizing it as a device.
· The device manager is recognizing the device.
· Samsung Switch is saying the device is not compatible.
· ADB/fastboot can not detect the device.
So ... is it possible to get this damn thing to work again or is it gone for good?
If you still got any questions regarding the current state of the phone please ask. I will try to reply ASAP.
Thank you very much for any reply you guys might throw at me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If your not bothered about tripping knox (0x1) and voiding your warranty you can flash twrp recovery. Then wipe from there or flash a custom ROM. This way we can know for sure if it's software or hardware issue.
callumbr1 said:
If your not bothered about tripping knox (0x1) and voiding your warranty you can flash twrp recovery. Then wipe from there or flash a custom ROM. This way we can know for sure if it's software or hardware issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that reply.
Sadly I can not flash twrp recovery because of that Reactivation Lock ... and I do not know how to deactivate it at the current state of the phone
Is there a way to workaround that lock?
same here lol. but even twrp recovery cannot run LOl, sammy charged me as U$$ 700 to repair,
of course i did not let them repair, and now i have a dead phone, that only goes to download mode, and the bootlogo with glitches
What if you get a stock ROM and flash it via Odin, if your phone goes to Download Mode...? I didnt totally understand your situation but that came to my mind, flashing stock firmware via Odin.
EDIT: Just went through your SITUATION a bit, you should get it inspected by someone and then decide, otherwise you might lose your phone permanently.
Same here
Same here.... But with s6....
Only download mode. Not even a bootlogo. No recovery... Tried flashing literally everything. is it possible to flash a custom Rom with Odin? Convert a rom.zip t a tar file? I tried flashing cf-root but I don't know if it's rooted...
Afternoon
I have a Lenovo 7" tablet which is sticking on boot...to describe:
tablet off, charge screen working fine (green battery)
can get into menu to select fastboot mode or recovery
fastboot works, at least screen appears!
recovery shows dead android/no command screen - how to access recovery?
booting up, get inital orange logo then a 'bing' and start of boot but then freezes on the second logo
tablet not visible on PC, even in fastboot mode (have installed drivers)
I'm looking to get this going but am a bit stumped. I tried reinstalling firmware but can't get SPF Tools to work with any available scatter files; I would like to install TWRP (I found a potential image file on XDA) but can't do this until the PC recognises it....and I'm going round in circles now....any suggestions gratefully received. :good:
Update
OK, post was maybe a bit premature - I've kinda fixed my issues.
Managed to get into recovery after watching many videos (most of which were wrong, but hey-ho, got me on the right path!). At dead android screen, press and hold in power + vol up + vol down together (there is a bit of knack, turn it on its side with buttons facing up seems to be easiest) - this fires up the recovery screen (android standard recovery).
I managed to get over my bootloop issue by performing a data wipe/factory reset and cache wipe, then restarted fine.
As this was a secondhand tablet (my usual purchases - good condition bootloops!) - once it booted up I got into the set-up screens only to discover a Google lock issue. I ran the FRP unlock from here: https://androidfilehost.com/?fid=11050483647474832839 using the instructions from here: http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/f958/lenovo-tab-4-7-essential-tb4-7304f-frp-remove-2322527/ (Voltrans second post, not the original one which has a 404 error on the download site). This removed the FRP lock straight off and now I have a functioning tablet.
I'm probably going to try getting custom recovery on so will see how that goes - I'll post back
and...that's all folks....
OK, despite finding a TWRP recovery online https://twrpbuilder.github.io/downloads/twrp/#441 and downloading it, can I get the fastboot unlocked? no.
Apparently Lenovo locked them all up and threw away the key, so nothing more can be done here.
I tried various iterations of fastboot oem unlock and fastboot flashing unlock, and nothing works, just get an error - and yes, I did put developer options on, OEM unlocking ticked and USB debugging active.... :silly:
So, unless someone can point me in a direction on how to unlock it - I've reached the end of the road with this one
Hello!
This is about an old model of phone, so chances are I am in trouble.. but will describe the problem specifically.
Was a normal S4 mini without modifications - turned on USB debugging, installed Samsung Kies, and Odin, and got started on this guide: (https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/root-samsung-galaxy-s4-mini.2387341/)
Went into "download mode", ran Odin, it detected my device, installed "GT-I9195_MF5_870901_kernel.tar.md5" as PDA within Odin (all files are on the forum post linked above)
After this, device rebooted, as per the guide.. then I had trouble getting into the "download"/"recovery" environment again for some reason, and in frustration, unplugged/plugged cable, and after this didn't work, closed and reopened Odin. Now the problem is the guide explicitly says "Do not close Odin", and this is where the issue came up.
Holding volume up + power + home, takes me to "android system recovery <3e>", which I'm guessing is where I should be, but however Odin does not recognise the device now, and in fact, in this recovery environment, I don't think it's recognised by my PC even, so I guess that's why both install steps had to be done in one go... Now, my phone has options such as "reboot system now", "apply update from ADB", etc, and other stuff, but I am not able to figure out what to do next, and so as a result, the phone is just not useable for me. (blurry picture attached)
Some notable details from the blurry picture are:
"KOT49H.I9195XXUCOE4" (at the top of the screen)
"# MANUAL MODE "
--- Appling Multi-CSC...
Applied the CSC-code : KOR
Successfully applied multi-CSC." (at the bottom of the screen)
Notably if I let the phone try to boot normally, it does get detected by my PC and by odin, but if I try to install something to the device with Odin, it falls over, something to do with being unable to establish connection probably because the phone is in the wrong mode. It would not be the end of the world if the phone was bricked forever but man would I feel like ****
Update: turns out there are two different things you can boot to, via the volume up + down buttons, my stupid ass didn't clock this, so got very confused. Now was able to follow the steps in their entirety, however phone is still not booting into OS, despite now having custom recovery.
After doing some research, seems that the issue stems from this:
BOOT LOADER AP SWREV:2
Apparently REV:2 can't be flashed with anything custom, and bricks the phone, and rev:2 is what I have. Whilst this will certainly put an end to my days of referencing old forum posts for stuff like this, at the very least I have a broken S4 mini with a perfect 16 Gb motherboard I can swap out, my bro's old one, he's not too happy but understands.