I’ve always been hesitant to enter the world of rooting and flashing because I was not willing to risk bricking my phone. I took the plunge last night and decided I wanted to install CyanogenMod 12 (Lollipop) on the S4. CM 12 was giving errors so I ended up with CM 11. I experimented following different blogs and videos online but these are the steps that worked for me. Always backup your data when doing something like this.
- Install the Samsung Drivers
- Install a custom recovery mode using Odin
- I used cofface_I9500_cwm_recovery_en_new (tar file)
- Connect phone to laptop
- Start phone in download mode (Volume down + Power + Home buttons)
- Select PDA button in Odin and select the tar file
- Click Start
- Download CM 11
- https://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=i9500
- Copy this zip file to the SD Card on your phone
- Start phone in recovery mode (Volume up + Power + Home buttons)
- Wipe data/factory reset
- Wipe cache partition
- Advanced / Wipe dalvic cache
- Root your phone
- Install zip from sdcard
- select the CM 11 zip that was downloaded
