yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] duowing:
I'm wondering if you could use this process to then change your US carrier version. So for example if you're on Verizon, flash the Canadian firmware, let that set up, then flash to T-Mobile. This might allow you to bypass whatever was keeping you stuck on the Verizon version?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sillyphillie:
That is exactly what I was thinking!

BTW Flashed wonderfully! I AM NOW CANADIAN!

---------- Post added at 12:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 PM ----------

Thank you again!! Now... How did you get the correct bands for T-Mobile on this firmware?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] denson9874:
I manually added the APNs for T-Mobile under Mobile Network in the setting menu. I got them from a Google search for APNs for T-Mobile.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sillyphillie:
So I am getting a little silly now...

I am trying to reflash the T-Mobile firmware to see if I can go stock from the Canadian. I know... kinda stupid ... But there are so many people out there just trying to get from VZW phones to T-Mobile. I figured I'd try it out. Worst case is I have to reflash the W firmware and move back over the border.

Will post back results shortly.

---------- Post added at 12:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:24 PM ----------

That did not work. Canadian version came back up but with T-Mobile Bloat. No thanks... I'll just go back to original Canada.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Whanksta:
Does this process factory reset the phone? Or it will just overwrite?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] duowing:
Thanks for trying! I appreciate the confirmation. It seems like we're not too far off from being able to just swap carrier versions.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
Maybe...lol. I think I will try that.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] oF2pks:
Indeed, didn't realize s8/sd835 source were already out !
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Bladescarr:
For real, thank you SO MUCH! :D

You have been so incredibly helpful throughout this whole thing, and I just cant thank you enough. And for that long explanation you typed out, thanks for that as well. I was incredibly helpful and informative.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] denson9874:
Oh its my pleasure to aid in anyway that I can. As I find out more, I spread that knowledge on to others. Also, a well documented and explained process mitigates repetitive questioning, at least in theory :silly:. So, with hope, users will take mine and other knowledge to collaborate to achieve the challenging, yet rewarding, goal of having root enabled on our S8 and S8 Plus. At least having non US carrier firmware on our US 950U/955U somewhat achieves half of what we initial came to this thread for. So I take that as thanks enough.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] unitz0mbie:
i have an att g955u, i can flash that CAN firmware and have no bloatware? and u said i will only lose wifi calling and volte which i dont mind, its my first time doing this type of things through odin, i always had twrp. if i mess up in any way is there a way to restore to stock? and will my sim work normally? im currently on cricket
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] 954wrecker:
Great work it looks like the Canadian variant supports just about every AT&T and T-Mobile band needed in the USA. Very nice to see this happen and get verified by the community.

LTE: B1 (2100), B2 (1900), B3 (1800), B4 (AWS), B5 (850), B7 (2600), B8 (900), B12 (700), B13 (700), B17 (700), B18 (800), B19 (800), B20 (800), B25 (1900), B29 (700), B30 (2300), B66 (AWS-3)
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Whanksta:
Can anyone tell me if Odin flashing 955W firmware on 955U will factory wipe the phone or will all my data stay intact?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] denson9874:
This all depends upon the CSC file that is flashed while in Odin. Normal CSC will require that your phone be wiped, whereas flashing HOME_CSC will not wipe data.

---------- Post added at 03:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------

Ideally you shouldn't have any issues going back to stock in case of unforseen issues. In this situation, you would flash US U firmware if anything fails.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
or he can just add W at the end lol so G950W or G955W and he will only get those firmwares
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] unitz0mbie:
will you be trying this aswell? at least to get no bloat?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
samfirm is depricated and no longer updated and actually directs you to updato.. not to mention i dled the firmware he recommended in 2 mins, not 2 hrs.. so not sure where your bandwidth testing was done lol
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
Denson...i have one question im hoping you might can answer before I flash. If I flash the Canadian FW on my T-Mobile s8 will my Verizon SIM card work? Or if anyone else has tried this combination and it worked. Thank you

---------- Post added at 08:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:21 PM ----------

No...samfirm application does work. I just downloaded the Canadian firmware with it. Just put sm-g950w in the model slot and region is XAC and it worked just fine.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
i have the firmware downloaded but have been working and need my phone so probably tom. night or sat ill get to it

---------- Post added at 08:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 PM ----------

i didnt say it didnt work lol.. i said its depricated meaning they are no longer updating it and they direct you to use updato on their xda thread lol if it works great but if its not working you will get no support.. updato works great and even the app on the play store works great
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] zwolf4444:
Does flashing the Canadian firmware function as a SIM unlock? Meaning, if lets say I buy the T-mobile variant, and I flash the Canadian firmware, will I then be able to use it on AT&T?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
That's what I'm wondering. Except flash to a t-mobile variant to use on verizon, since the US model has all the band's for every carrier anyways, I'm hoping the unlocked Canadian firmware unlocks all band's.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
I think I may have done sonething right?

Started out with stock, flashed factory boot with stock odin

Then I took the system.ext4 from stock and flashed that over with Odin Comsy, now I have play store , services, etc working with selinux permissive

It loaded cricket and metro pcs bloat as well which i dont undetstand
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
True...apologies for that. I've used samfirm since it was released and I get awesome download speeds with it.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
well we already did that lol.. we injected the factory boot into stock ap and flashed it already which gave us a stock system with a permissive kernel
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] unitz0mbie:
[MENTION=2441690]denson9874[/MENTION] u sir deserve to win the lottery, just flashed with no issues. lte working and no issues so far, thank you very much, i asked on the android discord and updates actually go through samsung, so no waiting for carriers to release
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] benmeroff:
I'm definitely willing to give this a shot, just want to make sure I have the OG firmware to restore with if necessary; where would be best to find the current stock SM-G950U firmware, or is it even publicly available?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
Updato website or Android app, per ellwigy...lol
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] force70:
Already been mentioned,read up a few posts
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Silenus21:
Guys please confirm if this method is unlocking your phone to use on another carrier.

Another thing, was I lucky or Sprint just doesn't put bloatware on the S8?

I have no branded boot animation, really no bloat from sprint, you can see it's a sprint phone because it says it on the model and the sprint OMADM from the configuration.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] benmeroff:
Updato only has AQD9 firmware available, where my ATT G950U is currently running AQC9... any significant difference or should I not worry?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] craya:
So I flashed the XAC W firmware over a Verizon one. I'm now getting "unable to view the access point name settings. access is restricted for the current user profile" when trying to add APN settings. Any suggestions?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Outbreak444:
Bixby button no longer remapable work QD9. Other than that I'm not sure the other differences, this is all I really cared about between the two.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] denson9874:
Hello Craya,

So I just want to clarify so that way I know the proper steps to resolve, so you flashed W firmware, I gather that much from your post. You attempted to access APNs to edit them, but you are getting access denied, roger. What is unclear is when you are attempting to access the APNs, are you trying to edit what is already there, are are you attempting to add a completely new APN, or you not able to access the setting altogether?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] craya:
I'm not able to view or add Verizon's APN. The list is empty except for that message. When I click add and go through the steps to add a new APN for Verizon, it just returns to the blank list.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
Cool then I'm learning =)

I did things a little different though, flashed combination on every slot in odin and then flashed the system. Do you think thst makes any difference?

Also, did y'all get other carrier bloat when you flashed the factory boot onto stock? My phone has T-Mo, Metro, and Cricket on it at the moment lol
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] craya:
Interesting. Since I needed my phone in a few hours, I went ahead and re-flashed the verizon firmware over the W firmware. It's back to reading as a U model; however, it didn't wipe my device and none of the Verizon bloat returned. I also have access to all the settings that verizon blocked, i.e. Samsung cloud and spam detection in the dialer
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
Just noticed theres verizon bloat there as well
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Maltego:
Anybody notice chainfire released auto root for the U model?

S8+: https://download.chainfire.eu/1080/...to-Root-dream2qltesq-dream2qltesq-smg955u.zip

S8:

https://download.chainfire.eu/1081/...Auto-Root-dreamqltesq-dreamqltesq-smg950u.zip

Whoever has the balls to try something that *normally* requires a unlocked bootloader...Thank you.

Found here: https://howtoroot.net/root-galaxy-s8-sm-g955u-s8-plus-sm-g955u-usa-unlocked-variant/

Not sure how trustworthy it was until they linked to chainfire's personal site.

Anyone?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sniper7kills:
I had tried this earlier in the day on my 955U, but had gotten an error about the SHA256 not matching.

If anyone else has tried; I'd be interested in hearing your results.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
I don't get it, why is Chainfire releasing cfautoroot for bootloader locked devices knowing full well it can't flash or boot? There are now several devices listed with locked bootloaders.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Maltego:
Maybe he knows something we don't? I'm curious too. If anyone tries it, please share results.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
initially yes as we flashed it how you did but then flashing stock with factory boot injected it was normal
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] TechBSwift:
I'm pretty sure this a no go. It says on his site locked bootloaders will probably brick...
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
it has already been posted/discussed lol it will not flash at all due to a locked BL..

We are thinking he has a script or just makes it for whoever posts recovery and requests it in the autoroot thread..
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
Do you think theres anyway to get csc codes to execute? It gives an error when I try the dialer. Does it work on stock?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
The other strange thing is the size of the recovery image is over 280mb. Most is just padding to increase the size of the image.

There is also a signature appended to the end of the payload, but what this signature is for I don't know? It can't be signed by Samsung. :confused:
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] Maltego:
I'm just a crawler looking for stuff on sketchy Asian sites and then I indexed his. I'm not the most knowledgeable in this field, but want to find anything to help. I'm going to dig deeper, change my IP back too China and Korea to get their results and forums regarding our model. Vietnamese and Persian forums are nice too. They're actually trying to root us too.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] km8j:
No root yet on SD right?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] PieceofSlice:
Correct. I'm not exactly sure of the progress...

Hopefully it will come though :fingers-crossed:

I would love to see this bad boy on AOSP :eek:
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
do u have a SD s8? i will try to flash it when i get home.. pretty sure someone stated they tried and got sha256 error tho

---------- Post added at 01:13 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:12 AM ----------

did you use regular odin or comsey odin?

---------- Post added at 01:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:13 AM ----------

you need more than simple root to be on aosp.. you also would need an unlocked BL
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sniper7kills:
Honestly; I don't know. I grabbed the latest version from odindownload.com/SamsungOdin; Version 3.12.3

I'm just trying to get root; or a clean stock non VZW image.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
probably regular.. comsey will say comsey on it.. reason i ask is bcuz comsey odin disables signature verification

---------- Post added at 01:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:21 AM ----------

so you might not get a sha256 error
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] PieceofSlice:
Yes, I know this. The two comments weren't necessary related lol. A man can dream, can't he? ;)
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
Tried this yesterday, stock odin returns version error or SHA error, comsy gets to the very end but trips secure boot
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
Can someone do me a favour? I have a theory on something which I'd like to confirm and may also help explain the existence of these cfautoroots.

Can someone either download diskinfo and tell me the size of the recovery partition or do the following in adb:

adb shell

ls -laR /dev/block

then do:

cat /proc/partitions

.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] billydroid:
If no one does I will when I get home in about an hour.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
Great, see my edit though.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] CSYates_98:
Does anyone have the modem file for AT&T? I accidentally bought the TMobile variant of the S8 and I would like the ability to use my phone. Lol.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
I'm seeing a "Shell" app installed, anybody know what that is, if it would be possible to run somehow and if thats even something that would be useful
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
you can run adb shell from a pc lol shell can be a lot of things but theres no root available so its not usefull as it stands
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
i have it...

here ya go...this is T-Mobile S8
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] barisgg:
Cool, I figured.. thanks for answering all my dumb questions. I'm a total noob at all this, not completely a fish out of water but I like to make sure yknow? lol and it's really helping me learn.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
Thanks, the boot and recovery partitions seem to be 32mb, way smaller than the cfautoroot recovery image. Sorta kills my theory off too.

Don't suppose you could confirm with diskinfo?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sniper7kills:
If you can help me out with how to find that info; I'd be more than glad to. I've installed diskinfo, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for.

If I'm looking for SDA18, its 64MB
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
Thanks.

---------- Post added at 02:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:28 AM ----------

Yes SDA 18.

Must be using a block size of 1024 then. Anyway still nowhere near big enough for the size of the recovery image which is 247mb.

My theory was that inside the meta-data folder is a tools folder with various utilities, one of them being BootSignature.jar

Seeing as to get the eng boot to flash correctly it is required to flash it with the meta-data folder present. I was wondering if the boot image was somehow being signed by one of these tools as it is flashed.

My theory was that Chainfire had flashed the recovery image with the meta-data folder to a rooted unlocked device then just pulled the raw image resulting in a bloated image and the reason for the empty bytes and the appended signature .

It can't be though because of the size of the image.:confused:
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] PieceofSlice:
Someone has to take one for the team and try this :p
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
??

Anyone tried Chainfire's release with the Factory Binary the OP released on page one?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] ashyx:
It's been confirmed as was expected. It's an image created by an automated system and is never going to work.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] dobosininja:
So you flashed the W firmware over Verizon firmware and then flashed stock Verizon firmware back over that to get a Verizon phone without all the bloat?

Which Verizon firmware did you use, and is there anyway to do this and keep my data intact?

Did the Samsung stock bootup stay, or did the Verizon stuff come back?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] djhotsauce:
Any word on that ENG Kernel yet?
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] billydroid:
Nope
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] dfogelstrom:
So then, what would the best process be to flash the W firmware to not lose data and to ensure we get the APN'S we need? (I need T-Mobile)
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] sd_N:
Also I'm looking for a confirmation that flashing the unlocked Canadian firmware would allow my T-Mobile S8 to work on Verizon???
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] craya:
Yeah, I flashed the XAC W firmware over stock Verizon. That wiped my device. I restored using smart switch (made a backup previously). After I gave up on getting the APN settings to switch, I flashed the stock vzw firmware from http://updato.com/firmware-archive-select-model?q=SM-G955U&exact=1 See attachment for the specific one.

For whatever reason, that didn't wipe my device. I was able to access my APN settings and my model number reverted back to U. I'm beginning to think my FW thinks its a Sprint model since when I toggled data roaming, it popped with with a help dialog containing a Sprint customer service #. That being said, it's behaving just like stock: no custom boot animations, spam blocking, no carrier apps, etc. I also had no issue connecting to VZ's network and the device behaves normally.

I'm using an S8+ fyi.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] jerrygenius:
The network of G950W won't support CDMA

So from my research on Samsung.com, there is no Canadian variant uses CDMA network as Verizon does. So flashing G950W wont actually unlock the CDMA bands. But I have a thought that:

1. This year China's variant G9500 uses SD as well. And China Telecom uses CDMA band. So maybe we can find out if flashing G9500 would work.

2. I am not sure if flashing G950W would wipe out our current userdata or not. if it do so. We can flash back to G950U after flashing G950W. Then it MIGHT be recognized as an US unlock variant.

Just some guess.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] craya:
Yeah, for sure it won't allow you to use the CDMA bands. I ran into this issue last night. Even though I enabled all bands via the service menu, the firmware's connection menu wouldn't allow me to enable CDMA nor add a verizon APN.

I also noticed when I was flashing the W XAC firmware, Odin listed that a userdata img was being flashed during the process. Where that came from, I'm not too sure.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] dobosininja:
I have the S8 so I might have to try that when I have the time and just install the verizon apps I use.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] jerrygenius:
That is a good news that user data is being flashed . This explains why we don't have the previous boot logo maybe. So I m not sure if flash back from G950w would do anything that can let me unlock my CDMA band. I am currently using att looking for switch to Verizon.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] craya:
You will lose WiFi calling. Also, while I'm able to select HD voice, HD Voice and Video is greyed out and cannot be enabled.
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
guys this is nothing new lol we messed around with a lot of firmware files while trying to root, i didnt think to post it but i kno i went back n forth with someone in another thread about it being possible to switch device to another carrier..

once you flash the W firmware your device essentially is turned into the canadian variant...

if you have gsm then you should be able to have most items functioning but cdma users are out of luck unless you have a way to truely enable the cdma bands.. not sure if its been tested but i thought someone said they went to combo firm first and enabled all bands prior to the W firmware and it worked but not sure..

once u are on the W version you should be able to flash a stock tar from your carrier of choice to bring it back to those bands working and in some cases carrier bloat is gone still.. in my doing this, carrier bloat is gone and device is showing as a U again..

in ormther flashes however i had vzw bloat so i really think it has to do with the tars you are flashing as some have a carrier specific userdata partition others dont have this
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] unitz0mbie:
would u recommend going back to U or staying in W? would it make a difference? im on att(cricket) so i dont need to worry about cdma
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] elliwigy:
its really up to you but of course the actual firmware for your carrier ensures everything works as intended but you might have to deal with some bloat
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] guaneet:
Can confirm the Canadian firmware works on my t mobile s8. Seems snappier(only saying this because I used to get framrdrops/lag when opening the app drawer but now I don't)And no t mobile bloat! Thanks!
[Samsung Galaxy S8 Guides, News, & Discussion] unitz0mbie:
same, this feels a lot faster, not sure because its a brand new system. ill give it some time and see how it feels, but i like it a lot so far. my only question do updates still go through carriers or will they go through samsung now?