I wanted to throw it away. But then, I saw a glimmer of hope on XDA Developers: "LineageOS 19.1 (Android 12L) for Samsung Note 5 - Unofficial."

The screen went black. No download mode. No recovery. Nothing. The Note 5 was a hard brick—the eMMC chip corrupted.

This time, the green bar filled. Then, adb sideload NikGapps-core-arm64-12-20220815.zip .

Suddenly, the setup wizard. Android 12's "Material You" design, silky smooth, on a 2015 phone. I wept.

Three months later, I got greedy. I tried to flash a ROM (Android 13). I forgot to flash the correct vendor patch. During the flash, my cat jumped on the desk, yanking the USB cable.