[Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Questions & Answers] IT_Architect:
Which is why I wanted confirmation. It looked fake, but one never knows. I know people have been working on it and talking about it, but I would have expected to find out about it on XDA with all of the discussions and searches I've been through.

I will need that because I figured by searching i'd find 100 threads on XDA about on it but only a few being good ones and it would take me forever to determine which one(s) those are.

This is exactly what has been on my mind and scarring me. I am in a very narrow place. The Note 8 was missing the new bands and no battery life. Any older Notes don't travel across US well, let alone the world. The Note 9 U, U1, and 9600 are as new as I can go and still have access to Oreo. If I get attacked by BL 2.0, Oreo becomes out of reach. jd14771 tried every trick in the book to stop the carrier updates and was not successful. The only people I've noticed with a successful track record of blocking the Pie update are using the SM-N960U1s. It appears that my only credible options to maintain Oreo are the U1 and 9600.

SM-N960U1 - Even if I could stop the carrier updates with U, the U1 MIGHT have the advantage of supporting more bands than the carrier firmware or perhaps any other phone in the world. You may remember me asking you about carrier firmware versions and bands, but I didn't give you the basis of my question. The basis was: Samsung Galaxy Note 9 SM-N960* Model Number DifferencesPrimaries traditionally have been used to authenticate and the de facto band to negotiate carrier services with device capabilities. The primaries for US carriers are:

Verizon: 13
AT&T 12 & 17
T-Mobile 2,4,12,71
Sprint 25

The SM-N960U1 covers all of bands the US carriers use and more. If flash a U with U1 firmware, do I get all of the U1's bands? If I get the extra bands, and if the bands are tied to the hardware, the vendor firmware must be limiting them somehow. If the hardware is permanently set to be specific to the vendor, then flashing the to Verizon firmware from the T-Mobile firmware would be an "exercise". I wouldn't know because the T-Mobile variant has B13 support also but if the Verizon bands weren't there, then it would be limited on the Verizon network. It would also mean the AT&T Note 9 hardware should have issues with the Verizon network since they have no B13. If we assume that the firmware filters the bands, then an AT&T Note 9 would have issues connecting with Verizon also. If the inserting the SIM type causes reconfigures the bands to match the carrier, then plugging a SIM into any carrier's Note 9 would make all of the carrier's bands available. What I do know is the SM-N960U1 bands are a superset of SM-N9600 bands, and even a superset of the iPhone X World Phone. We know if a carrier holds out on on an SM-N960U1 with regard to certain services, it cannot be because you don't have the bands required. I might mean that they don't have down a phone that is trying to negotiate options with them that they don't know how to respond to. It also makes sense it would be the last to get firmware updates because the band communications would need to be proven across all o the US vendors before they could roll it out into the non-carrier specific SM-N960U1. With the SM-N960U1 I keep Samsung Pay.

SM-N9600 - I get dual SIM and root to where I can break the update ability of the OS to update, like I had to with the Verizon Note 3s. Root gives me real backups and all of my network and wireless tools back again too, which would result in me having an updated Note 3, which would be WONDERFUL! There are also more phone terrorists out there than just carriers trying to sabotage me with Pie. Another concern is the Play Store Virus turning automatic updates back on, and the Policy Virus that puts in place limitations preventing software from working even on Oreo. That's where TWRP would be real nice to have. With TWRP its wait 20 minutes and your world is right back where it was, including all of your settings and screen organization. Without root it would mean reflash, and there is no guarantee that HOME_CSC would fix it, and if not, CSC, restore all of your apps, and try to remember how you had your environment set up. On the other hand, the SM-N9600 doesn't show the band support that the SM-N960U1 has. Moreover, the SM-N9600 does not support Band 13, nor can you register a SM-N9600 on the Verizon network. Thus, when Verizon sees the MEID of an SM-N9600, it would make sense that they would finger it as incompatible. We also know that people are running SM-N9600s on the Verizon network, but I'm guessing they are running a custom ROM, and I know they activate the SIM on another compatible phone. So either they somehow get on without B13, which would place significant limitations on the use of their network capabilities, or the custom ROM brings the missing Band 13 and perhaps a whole lot more, such as the entire U1 band repertoire. That would indicate the bands are in the flash.

US wireless vendors are no longer in a position to support a vendor policy of being a prick. The FCC will not give them any bandwidth allocation until they can prove what they have is optimized and they are getting short on capacity. The FCC does not view a vendors inability to optimize what they have as justification for more bands. That's precisely why Verizon is in such a panic to get people off CDMA and from LTE and onto LTE-A. Moreover, they would have to be plum crazy not to get Wi-Fi calling and free hot spots working every place they could. You can't sell what you don't have and Wi-Fi calling and hot spots are the cheapest and most hassle-free capacity they will ever find. Limitations may stem more from not having in place what is necessary to negotiate with phones that are trying to negotiate bands they don't have, and it's in their best interest to make the situation as temporary as possible. The reason vendors unlock their phones is it came from the FCC as a contractual condition for a bandwidth deal. The FCC's position became buying the phone and the service are two separate things. That wasn't possible before because Sprint and Verizon owned the US, and Cingular (now AT&T), and T-Mobile were local curiosities. Not only was CDMA superior in every way, Qualcomm locked the phones to the carrier, which carriers loved. The superior technology would have taken over the world were it not stopped by European laws that served to prevent them from being beholden to one company. That also influenced bordering countries. GSM later incorporated cdma themselves. Qualcomm, Sprint and Verizon were vested in Clearwire's 4G Wi-Max, and enthusiastically rolling it out in big cities. Then Sprint bought Clearwire, causing Verizon to bolt to GSM, who were flailing around trying to define an answer to Wi-Max. Verizon was a HUGE fish and put Verizon in a dominant position to kill the indecision and dictate the LTE transition path for CDMA and iPhone had grown GSM to significance in the US market with its initially exclusive contract with Cingular->AT&T on the GSM side. About a year later, Sprint conceded the obvious that they would support LTE also, but the facts are Wi-Max deployments from an end-user perspective stalled, phone manufacturers lost interest, and Wi-Max morphed into a highly capable wireless lattice backbone for metro areas that only 5G can equal. So the industry may have been set back 3-5 years but I like swapping SIMs better than swapping phones, and it put the FCC in a position to be able to say, Sure, I'll let you have that band IF you unlock your phones.

Thanks HUGE!!! for your insights. You've helped me A LOT,