Keep root access, while being official - Samsung Galaxy S3

Long time, no post, eh?

Yeah, well you know, that's what having another baby does!

Anyway, back to the main topic here, I've figured out a way to keep root on the Galaxy S3, whilst resetting the flash count / firmware status. I've not heard of using this particular method before, I've heard of pulling the battery when using Triangle Away and the phone is rebooting (dodgy imo!)

This post doesn't try to offend or take any awesomeness away from Chainfire - I'm just listing something I found that gets rid of the annoying statuses while keeping root!

I've used Triangle away, which previously worked, however on later versions of the stock i9300 firmware it doesn't seem to reset the custom binary / official  statuses. Long story short, I had installed a load of crud on the phone lately and it started freezing up / rebooting randomly - it's on stock XXELLA and had been rooted using ChainFire's autoroot as I quite like the stock firmware features - AWESOME!

"Great so you're rooted, so are we, now tell us how to reset the counter already while keeping root !" I hear you say. Well, take a good backup of all your apps / data / bacon pictures / porn etc

I also installed Super SU via the market to get regular updates etc
Open Super SU, goto Settings, scroll down to System and tap "Install SuperSU into /system" and reboot - I think this is the most important step as resetting the device will not remove any system apps - ie Super SU when installed in /system *wink* *wink*

Tap Menu, Settings, Samsung Account, tap Backup now if you have a Samsung account, tap back a couple times to get to the main Settings list again, then under the Personal heading tap Back up and reset, make sure you've setup the Google backup which should remember the wifi AP's etc then tap Factory data reset and follow this through.

All being well you should have a fully rooted device when you've completed the initial setup and should notice Super SU still installed / needing an update - check your phone status for flash count and binary status and under Settings > About > Status it should show Device status as normal.

If anyone else could check this out to confirm it works for them too, that would be great - either on stock or custom firmware and let me know, please!