[Galaxy Note 3 General] justinxfan:
WARNING! THIS WILL BREAK YOUR WARRANTY! I HOLD NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRICKS, BOOTLOOPS, ETC. IF YOU END UP HAVING A 500 DOLLAR BRICK, IT IS NOT MY FAULT AS

YOU

ARE THE ONE WHO DECIDED TO DO THIS PROCEDURE!!!!!!

THIS GUIDE IS FOR THE SM-N900. IF YOU TRY THIS ON ANY OTHER DEVICE, YOU WILL 99.99999% CHANCE OF BRICK!!!!(NO SM-N9005, N900V, ETC.)

Hey guys, so many of you are wondering if you can downgrade from 5.0 to 4.4.2 or from 4.4.2 to 4.3. I see many people say this is not possible, but it is! :)

you'll require:

A windows machine with a sensible version of windows (no windows 95, 98, etc.. :p)

OR

A mac that either dual boot windows and os x or running windows in a virtual machine (this is what I'm doing)

Odin - Download here

A SM-N900 device running 5.0 or 4.42

A stable internet connection

USB Debugging enabled on your device. If you don't know how to enable it, check here

Boot loader: http://www.mediafire.com/?edp1iw3qzwhtoij (Only if you're downgrading to 4.3!)

7-Zip - Download here (WinRAR WILL NOT work)

SamFirm - Download here

And last but not least....

A brain :p

Okay, let's get on with this.

STEP 1:

Download and install everything I listed above!

Back-up all data on your device.

Unzip SamFirm and Odin to respective folders on the desktop

Open SamFirm by double clicking on the exe

You will be greeted with the application. You now need to specify what firmware you want to download. Enter the model name as SM-N900 (All caps!). Next, you'll be prompted to enter your region. For downgrading to 4.3, enter XFU as the region. For 4.4.2, enter BTC. Don't check binary nature and select auto mode. On the right, select decrypt automatically and then press download.

The firmware will now begin downloading. Wait for the download to complete.

STEP 2 (Only if you're downgrading to 4.3! If you're downgrading to 4.4.2, go to step 4) :

Power off the device. Boot to recovery by holding home, power and volume up at the same time. Do a factory reset. Power off the device again and boot to download mode by holding the volume down, home and power buttons. You will be greeted with a warning. Press continue. Open odin and wait for odin to recognize your device. Select the BL tab and select the bootloader.tar that you downloaded. Next, go to the options tab and unselect auto reboot. Then start the flashing process. DO NOT SHUT DOWN YOUR COMPUTER, PHONE OR UNPLUG THE DEVICE DURING THIS PROCESS!

Once the flash has completed, shut down the device and reboot to download mode.

STEP 3:

Next, take the decrypted zip you downloaded. Open the zip with 7ZIP. Extract the tar.md5 file and open that with 7ZIP. Extract the contents of the tar.md5 file. Delete the sboot.bin, then rezip. Select all the extracted files and right click. Click 7-ZIP > add to archive. Select archive type as tar and then recompress.

STEP 4: Go back to odin, and press reset. Go to the AP tab and select the new tar you just created or if you're downgrading to 4.4.2, select the tar.md5 extracted from the zip. Wait for odin to process the file. It may appear that odin has hanged. This is normal. Wait for it process the file. This time, select auto-reboot from the options tab. Then, start the flash. This flash with take a minute or two. After it finishes flashing, the device will automatically reboot. After the splash screen, it may appear that the device has hanged due to the black screen. Wait for a few seconds, and the startup animation will play as usual. At this point, you should be successfully downgraded!

NOTE: IF YOU HAVE MOBILE NETWORK OR IMEI ISSUES, THEN FLASH THIS OR THIS MODEM IN CWM OR TWRP

If this helped you, please press thanks.