[Samsung Galaxy S7 Guides, News, & Discussion] darkstar32526:
Note - this is for the SM-G930A AKA AT&T model only. Unrooting and flashing firmware works the same way for other carriers, but with different files.

Hi everyone, I just thought I should share how I went about unrooting my S7. I initially rooted it while it was running Nougat already, and I liked the extra customization options. However, I found after several months of using it that the only real feature that I personally liked about having a rooted S7 was the ability to "try" paid apps for free using Lucky Patcher. :cool:

The downside of rooting, for me anyway, was severely slow laggy touch inputs and general phone performance. Sometimes - especially after a reboot - I experienced slightly better performance, but overall it just got too annoying. The app that gave me the most trouble was Google Maps. That's why I decided to cut my losses and unroot; I'd figured out which apps I actually wanted to buy since I'd already used them for a while (I will miss free in-app purchases though ;)).

So after some Googling and reading up, I decided to try for myself. I was already running baseband version G930AUCU4BQA4 before I rooted, so I thought maybe I could just flash stock Nougat and be done. However, all the guides I read say to flash a stock firmware, so that's what I did to be safe.

So first I downloaded the stock firmware for my phone from a website called rootmygalaxy, on the Download Stock ROM For AT&T Galaxy S7/S7 Edge (SM-G930A/SM-G935A) page (being a new user sucks).

After that, I used the stock, unpatched version of Odin v3.12.3, (from Odin's website) to flash the stock firmware onto my phone. It should be noted that the steps you take to flash a firmware to download mode should be 1. Open Odin, 2. Put phone in download mode, 3. plug the phone in. I had some failures in Odin because I was doing that wrong. Steps one and two are probably interchangeable, but just make sure plugging in the phone is the last thing you do. Also, make sure you have ticked USB Debugging and OEM Unlock under developer options before you do any flashing.

Once that was complete, I rebooted my phone and set up Android 6.0.1 on the phone. After a full 24 hours, I still couldn't get any OTA updates, so I decided to manually flash Nougat because it is so much better than Marshmallow.

This guide on the website droidviews called Install Android 7.0 Nougat on AT&T Galaxy S7/ S7 Edge (SM-G930A/ G935A) was very helpful.

Take note of the fact that the guide references baseband versions by the last 4 characters, i.e. G930AUCU4BQA4 becomes just BQA4. I checked my baseband version, which ended in APJ4. According to that guide, all I had to do was flash APK1 and then I'd be set to update to Nougat, so that's exactly what I did.

After again flashing via the 4-file method with Odin, I set up the phone again so I was back at the home screen. I downloaded both the APK1 and the .zip file containing Nougat while my phone was charging (from 90%, my phone was at ~50% by the time I had Nougat up and running), and I placed the .zip Nougat update onto an SD card that I usually keep in the phone. Once APK1 was set up, I put the SD card back in, rebooted into Recovery Mode, and waited until the manual screen came up. Then I simply chose update from SD card, chose the .zip file I'd placed in there, and waited. After a while, I was greeted by a new setup screen. I set up Nougat and now it's running just fine.

The only issue I'm seeing is that I'm still not getting any OTA updates. I hope that doesn't continue, but if it does I can just update via .zip or something.

Thanks for reading!