[Samsung Galaxy S20 / S20+ / S20 Ultra Guides, News] ngdskier:
Hi all. Looking for some guidance on a high-level plan for my G981U...

Quick Background:

I've rooted my S2 and S4 before, but never got around to rooting my S8, but want to root my S20

I'm quite comfortable with technical stuff (I'm a Sr. Systems Engineer/Software Dev Engineer for 20 + years)

I bought my S20 (AT&T G981U 5G) over a year ago, but haven't had time to read/absorb everything on how to root my S20 and the best options/route, and thus haven't used my S20 at all, because if I let it get online, I believe it will auto-update the bootloader (which I've verified IS unlockable) and I'll lose my ability to unlock/root. My S8 is starting to go south (screen flashing green), so now figuring out a plan is now a bit more urgent (plus my wife is bugging me about not using the phone I bought so long ago. LOL).

I can look up further details later, but I'm looking for help with an overall plan to point in the right direction...

Goal/Questions/Plan development:

I'm pretty sure that the first thing I need to do is unlock the bootloader

Suggestion for best/safest/best-pricing person/place to do this?

I don't want to have any problems with my carrier, if possible, so carrier firmware that is rootable would probably be fine (but open to other options, if no carrier issues).

I could possibly go either way on bloatware... If having the UserData stuff is required to have all carrier stuff (phone calls/data/wifi calling/mobile hot-spot, etc) work properly and that means I have some bloatware (which maybe I can just disable with root access, if desired), then fine. If there's an option where I'm bloatware free, but everything works as expected, that's fine too.

I don't really care about things like making payment using my phone (I just want to make call, use data, install apps I want, use GPS, etc)

Having been a systems/software eng for years, I just can't standing having a phone (i.e. computer) tell me "you don't have permission to do that." ;-)

My main goal here is being able to start using my phone ASAP, WITHOUT losing the ability to unlock the boot loader and being able to root it and/or maybe play with other firmware options later.

If it was as easy as "run this app and it will root your phone, and then you can disable auto-updates" (like it was on my S2), I'd just do that for now, but I know the S20 isn't that easy, and life has been so busy with family/kids/work/yard/volunteering/etc that I just haven't found time to do all the research I'd want to do to figure out "how to get there from here," so I'm hoping someone could suggest a high level plan like:

Use <person/site> to unlock your boot loader (assuming this is a required first step)

Flash to image X with options Y and Z

Optionally do A, B, and C to enable root and keep it (maybe having to disable auto-updates, etc)

Thanks in advance to any experts out there that can help point me in the right direction to get my "new" phone up and running ASAP without losing image update/root options in the future.

Thanks!

P.S. If there is a better thread for this question or if I should start my own thread, let me know, but I figured this thread probably has the experts that could answer my question quickly/easily/authoritatively. :cool: