[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] denson9874:
No reason to apologize, we were all new to this, some are pretty novice even with the amount of time we have invested. To answer your question, the major differences between USA G950/G955 U firmware is that there is some sort of carrier recognition process that applies the specific carrier related software to the S8, thus resulting in only one G950/G955 U firmware for all major US carriers. G950/G955 W firmware, on the other hand, is Canadian FW, meaning that there, presumably, isn't any carrier recognition process that identifies what carrier your SIM is associated to, meaning that there are several FW available applicable to major carriers withing the Canada Carrier database. In short, multiple firmware for CAN, only one for USA.

Prior to the introduction of the S8/S8 Plus, the firmware released in the US had a same application process that CAN does, different firmware for different carriers. So, at the time, if a person wanted to be able to change carrier FW, either aesthetically of functionally, they were able to do so by flashing the applicable firmware for that carrier onto their device. Also, that presented the opportunity for if someone that didn't want any carrier branding, they had the option of flashing U firmware, which was the US unlocked firmware. Seeing this be the case, it appears that CAN carriers are still holding this fashion, were as Samsung has adopted this newer process for implementing firmware for the US. This posed a problem for those of us who were used to the older way, and for quite some time prior to my posting, were hard-pressed to find that even by flashing different Product Code FW, i.e. TMB, SPR, VZW, TMK, etc, we were still getting the original carrier apps back installed on the device, thus rendering any efforts of flashing alternative firmware meaningless. Now that CAN and USA S8/S8 Plus have SD 835 SOC, which at a time prior, they didn't, we can now flash CAN FW without pre-installation of carrier bloatware.

Now to answer the next question about updates time frame. This question is hard to answer given the new implementation of U firmware being now the standard for US. Generally, carriers control the release of firmware to customers after being received by Samsung after certification. That may or may not change, I'm unable to honestly advice any other theory of change. What can be said is that there will be some sacrifices taken when flashing a different carriers firmware of your device. Which segways into your third question.

From having the CAN firmware now of my device for a few hours, I have noticed no infringement on the use of Samsung Pay. Granted, I have not had an opportunity to make a purchase with CAN firmware on my device at time of this post, so the aforementioned statement could very well be premature and recanted after attempt and failure, but only time can tell of that. VOLTE and Wifi-Calling don't come with CAN firmware, so those are two things that you will not have on this firmware, so bare that in mind prior to flashing.

---------- Post added at 11:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 AM ----------

That is correct. With Canadian FW, there is no USERDATA file needed due to it being included in the AP.tar file. No need to edit config due the Princecomsy 3.12 Odin is already patched to bypass Hash Verification.:good::good: