Database Users

[Q] AT&T (G900A) - Did I screw up by buying this one?

I can't seem to find any legitimate way to root my G900A from AT&T.
I was with Sprint with my S4, and never had an issue. I made the switch to AT&T before buying the S5.. Was that mistake?
In all the threads I've combed through here there is one common, glaring, issue.. The G900A is not included in the supported devices.
Am I missing something obvious or am I screwed? Or am I just looking too soon?
Already gave the S4 to my daughter.
Thanks for any information or insight.

ACiD0N said:
I can't seem to find any legitimate way to root my G900A from AT&T.
I was with Sprint with my S4, and never had an issue. I made the switch to AT&T before buying the S5.. Was that mistake?
In all the threads I've combed through here there is one common, glaring, issue.. The G900A is not included in the supported devices.
Am I missing something obvious or am I screwed? Or am I just looking too soon?
Already gave the S4 to my daughter.
Thanks for any information or insight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is a universal root method.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2717061
Try to talk with a recovery developer to check your partition table.
(Other variant may have matching partition table with your variant)
I guess, @PlayfulGod can help you with it.

ACiD0N said:
I can't seem to find any legitimate way to root my G900A from AT&T.
I was with Sprint with my S4, and never had an issue. I made the switch to AT&T before buying the S5.. Was that mistake?
In all the threads I've combed through here there is one common, glaring, issue.. The G900A is not included in the supported devices.
Am I missing something obvious or am I screwed? Or am I just looking too soon?
Already gave the S4 to my daughter.
Thanks for any information or insight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
SandeepEmekar said:
Here is a universal root method.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2717061
Try to talk with a recovery developer to check your partition table.
(Other variant may have matching partition table with your variant)
I guess, @PlayfulGod can help you with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sure eventually a root method will come about for that model. Unfortunately tho, the vzw & att models have a locked bootloader and most likely locked down with knox as well and currently no way to boot custom recoveries or kernels.

PlayfulGod said:
I'm sure eventually a root method will come about for that model. Unfortunately tho, the vzw & att models have a locked bootloader and most likely locked down with knox as well and currently no way to boot custom recoveries or kernels.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@PlayfulGod is absolutely right. Even if an exploit is found for the AT&T or Verizon models, it is unlikely that you'll ever have full root access - thanks to the combination of locked bootloaders, KNOX, and SELinux.
Check your contract - most carriers have a 14-day "buyer's remorse" period in which you can return your handset. You might be faced with a $35-$50 "restocking fee", but depending on how desperate you are for custom ROMs and/or Recovery, it may be worth it to you. Please note that your carrier may try everything they can to stop you from leaving (in terms of talking you out of it). Your contact with AT&T should also have a "back-out" period of 30 days (unless that's changed recently).
Couple other notes:
1) That's the primary reason I switched from AT&T to TMO when I jumped from the S4 to the S5 - I was sick of locked bootloaders. Otherwise, I really just like TMO a lot more as a company, including some of their political standpoints.
2) I've heard of several people now buying TMO S5's and taking them over to AT&T. It's a lot of money up front, but might be worth it to you.
Good luck.

Thanks guys
Thank you for the informative replies. They confirmed what I had already gathered, piece by piece, in a decent comprehensive manner so I appreciate it.
Unfortunately, this time around we gamed the system a bit and went in on this as a 'group' for the services and phones. As far as I can tell, as an individual, I don't have any options of returning the unit in favor of moving to another provider.
Besides that, I finally have good service where I live. I am in the middle of a city but my actual home was in a crap spot with Sprint. After doing research we found that we'd all have great service with AT&T. If the trade-off is no root, so be it I suppose. (Though I have heard that T-Mo has the same service in the same areas due to using the same connectivity)
The knox deal doesn't concern me so much.. This may be a bit cocky (and a little stupid), but I have yet to have to replace a galaxy since they started putting them out *knock on wood*. But it sounds like that's only one issue in a sea of others.
Long-winded story short, Thanks guys. I am much more informed on my situation than before. :good:

ACiD0N said:
I can't seem to find any legitimate way to root my G900A from AT&T.
I was with Sprint with my S4, and never had an issue. I made the switch to AT&T before buying the S5.. Was that mistake?
In all the threads I've combed through here there is one common, glaring, issue.. The G900A is not included in the supported devices.
Am I missing something obvious or am I screwed? Or am I just looking too soon?
Already gave the S4 to my daughter.
Thanks for any information or insight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I expressly bought a G900W8 model because of the locked bootloader issue with AT&T. I've come from Verizon on the S4, and I wasn't doing the whole locked thing again - it was annoying and I just wasn't going to have it. What I did was buy an S5 from AT&T on a $25/month installment plan, turn around and sold it on Swappa for full price, and bought an unlocked W8 model the same day. I payed virtually nothing except shipping, I get a nice unlocked phone ready for AOSP when it comes out, and I didn't have to pay the ridiculous $650 price for what would be essentially a developer unlocked phone.
If your phone is still new and you think you could sell it and get mint condition pricing on it, do your research on the G900T model. That's TMobile's phone, but it has an unlocked bootloader, can be rooted/flashed/whatever you like, and if I remember correctly (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), it works on all the bands that AT&T does and will be virtually the same as far as mobile data goes. If you already have your service activated on your current AT&T phone, you can literally just swap the SIM card out and you shouldn't have any issues after that. There might be a little caveat as far as having an AT&T SIM in a Tmo phone, but as far as I've read on the forum, this is very easy to get past; you may very well not have any problems whatsoever.
You could look for the W8 model, which wouldn't have any carrier branding on it, but those were hard to come by for me on Swappa, and the unlocked listing the main page gives you is for a phone that doesn't support 4G.
So like I said, if you think you could sell it, and you find a good listing on Swappa for an unlocked phone, I say go for it. Having an unlocked bootloader is going to put your device in a good place as far as updates go, and once developers start pushing out polished custom ROMs, you'll be happy to use your device for longer than the year's use that is generally expected.

[Q] International/global S5 questions.

Hey all posting here and a bit new, so excuse me as I had some questions.
Now, I have done research on unlocked factory phones for S5 but wanted to clarify as I will not jump into a purchase yet. I am thinking about a factory unlocked phone for the S5 on ebay. But, as I understand, this runs on GSM internationally. I am thinking of bringing one to Verizon, but as I am aware they run on Cdma technology and I wouldn't be able to use a sim card. Also, is it true the Exynos version of the S5 doesn't actually have LTE yet? If so, it may be a deciding factor.
Also, my girlfriend wants to possibly bring one to Virgin Mobile but I didn't think that you could as they are also Cdma. Again, wasn't sure how this would apply to unlocked phones from the factory that weren't locked to any carrier. I would also check the frequency, but there is no point of the international version has no ability to utilize LTE which are pretty fast in my areas. Any insight is greatly appreciated and as mentioned, I tried up read up a lot, but still want to make sure I fully understand. Thanks!

vexsilver said:
Hey all posting here and a bit new, so excuse me as I had some questions.
Now, I have done research on unlocked factory phones for S5 but wanted to clarify as I will not jump into a purchase yet. I am thinking about a factory unlocked phone for the S5 on ebay. But, as I understand, this runs on GSM internationally. I am thinking of bringing one to Verizon, but as I am aware they run on Cdma technology and I wouldn't be able to use a sim card. Also, is it true the Exynos version of the S5 doesn't actually have LTE yet? If so, it may be a deciding factor.
Also, my girlfriend wants to possibly bring one to Virgin Mobile but I didn't think that you could as they are also Cdma. Again, wasn't sure how this would apply to unlocked phones from the factory that weren't locked to any carrier. I would also check the frequency, but there is no point of the international version has no ability to utilize LTE which are pretty fast in my areas. Any insight is greatly appreciated and as mentioned, I tried up read up a lot, but still want to make sure I fully understand. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as far as I know the GS5 is not dual radio, so it is GSM only, if you want to use it on CDMA, you probably have to buy from the carrier. But be warned, as of now there is no chance of bootloader unlocking and root on many carrier devices.
Exynos version has no LTE and has very little dev support.

Hellscythe said:
as far as I know the GS5 is not dual radio, so it is GSM only, if you want to use it on CDMA, you probably have to buy from the carrier. But be warned, as of now there is no chance of bootloader unlocking and root on many carrier devices.
Exynos version has no LTE and has very little dev support.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey there and thanks for taking the time to reply. Yeah seems like the phones too fresh. I will think about that then and maybe give the phone more time. Meanwhile, seeing what my S3 could do for flexibility.

[Q] Installing a stock rom on a verizon UNLOCKED s5

Hi everyone!
So during my trip in the US, I decided to buy a brand new Galaxy S5. I was going to use it outside US so I wanted an unlocked version (since they don't sell international versions in us)
So I got a verizon version of the S5.
Model: SM-G900V
The problem
The problem is that i am getting notifications like. Non Verizon sim inserted. Loads of verizon bloatware. and I cant use my mobile hotspot. Similar to this
I absolutely hate this. I paid $800 for this phone and I'm bombarded with verizon's nonsense and restricted for no reason
My question
The question is, can I install a stock rom on my S5? more specifically can I flash the SM-G900f ?? So that I can get rid of this custom verizon software.

vidhu1911 said:
The question is, can I install a stock rom on my S5? more specifically can I flash the SM-G900f ?? So that I can get rid of this custom verizon software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well it's complicated and you have some reading to do if you really want to understand your options. But broadly speaking, the answer is yes. Since you were (or are?) planning to use the phone elsewhere, you'd have been happier had you bought a different S5 variant e.g. a TMobile S5 rather than the Verizon one because you would find it a lot less restrictive, give you more choices and options. And even access to a larger palette of frequency bands should you end up roaming somewhere that uses unusual frequency bands.
Note that there is a dedicated Verizon S5 forum here where you'll find most of what you are looking for. What you are thinking of as a stock ROM would be more accurately called a custom ROM. A stock ROM is.. well what you currently have, with all of the included carrier /Verizon applications that are annoying you. You'll probably want to root your phone and flash a custom ROM to get rid of a lot of superfluous Verizon stuff. That may have warranty implications and you should do some reading about warranty and locked bootloaders (something extra nice that Verizon and ATT do to make it harder to flash your phone).
.

Crushed my S5 (AT&T), which variant should I replace it with?

I crushed my S5 (AT&T) today, pretty much broke it in half. Ooops.
I've long disliked the bootloader lock and ATT bloatware but I want to stay with the S5 platform for now since I like the form factor and various features.
Which is the best S5 variant for me to get that allows the most flexibility with unlocked bootloader and loading various ROMs? I'm thinking its the T-mobile variant, but wanted to get some feedback before I bought one. I'll be using a SIM from Puretalk as my carrier, so any SIM unlocked version should work.
Many thanks!

G900F seems to be the most popular, and has an unlocked bootloader

*Detection* said:
G900F seems to be the most popular, and has an unlocked bootloader
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
G900T is a good choice as well. If you're in North America it might be easier to get your hands on one of those than a G900F.

Want to move from Sprint to T-Mobile... too much info, need short answer

I'm kind of newb at this S7 stuff, I'm more of an HTC guy. Yesterday, I bought an unlocked G930P (sprint) and am not sure, but think I learned that normally, people don't change out the ROMs to use a different carrier, they simply unlock the phone and live with the old carrier's bloatware. I started reading up, and first learned that TWRP apparently isn't available on a Snapdragon processor, so the G930A, G930P, etc, aren't candidates for TWRP. At first, I was kind of dismayed. Then, I found the G930U ROM and on a whim, I tried punting the G930U ROM to the G930P. I bought the phone off craigslist, and he said he didn't know where HE got it from, but it was unlocked. Anyhow, the phone took the rom without a hitch and now it looks like a U model...
My goal: Go with T-Mobile. Use Wi-Fi calling. Eventually have Nougat. Remove bloatware, but possibly keep some nice T-Mobile add-ons, if any, because I don't have their service yet (I hated ATT's crapload of stuff). Note this isn't specifically a "TMobile" question, substitute your carrier of choice for the questions...
Get to the damned question, you say? Ok, here goes:
1. I'm not going to ask any "do these bands work" when moving from a P model to T mobile. You guys seem to fight about that stuff until you can't type any longer. I'm going to assume what whatever bands work, that's what I get. Unless I get a T-Mobile specific phone.
2. But I will ask this: do the over the air bands it uses depend on the baseband ROM that is on the device? This is something I can't figure out.
3. I heard T-Mobile uses an updated boot kernel (3.0?) and ATT & others use an older boot kernel, and that if I move to T-Mobile boot kernel, I can't go back to any of the older ones. This process I seriously don't understand. Can I run a T-Mobile OS (or any OS) while using an older boot kernel ROM? I would think NO, right?
4. I don't like all of Carrier X's bloatware. I'd rather use a stripped down, cleaner ROM. I guess there are apps for that, but is it cleaner to do it with a stripped down generic ROM that I see floating around?
6. Speaking of ROM's - I saw a lot of Xetheros or whatever ROM's floating around, but it seems like there aren't any for the snapdragon-based ones. Is this true? The posts on this site don't really talk much about the snapdragon-based phones and why there aren't any ROMs for them, and why it won't work, and what, if anything, is being done to get around this. I guess the G930U is Samsung's answer to that, and allows fooling around with roms, but will the other phones ever be actually rom-able, or should I ditch this G930P and actually buy a G930U? Now that my phone THINKS it's a G930U, did that get me around some weird barrier and NOW I can update other funky roms intended for a G930U?
I'm considering selling the G7 I just got and going from a G930F (now that I'm a bit wiser). Any common sense why not to do that? I already HAVE an ATT G7 (not the sprint one I just bought), but it has a "bad signal". It gets only about 1 bar indoors, on a good day. I took it to a repair facility and they said, "nothing wrong with the antenna, it's your mainboard, don't bother just buy a new phone". Anybody have any advice on that?
thanks

BroncoBilli said:
I'm kind of newb at this S7 stuff, I'm more of an HTC guy. Yesterday, I bought an unlocked G930P (sprint) and am not sure, but think I learned that normally, people don't change out the ROMs to use a different carrier, they simply unlock the phone and live with the old carrier's bloatware. I started reading up, and first learned that TWRP apparently isn't available on a Snapdragon processor, so the G930A, G930P, etc, aren't candidates for TWRP. At first, I was kind of dismayed. Then, I found the G930U ROM and on a whim, I tried punting the G930U ROM to the G930P. I bought the phone off craigslist, and he said he didn't know where HE got it from, but it was unlocked. Anyhow, the phone took the rom without a hitch and now it looks like a U model...
My goal: Go with T-Mobile. Use Wi-Fi calling. Eventually have Nougat. Remove bloatware, but possibly keep some nice T-Mobile add-ons, if any, because I don't have their service yet (I hated ATT's crapload of stuff). Note this isn't specifically a "TMobile" question, substitute your carrier of choice for the questions...
Get to the damned question, you say? Ok, here goes:
1. I'm not going to ask any "do these bands work" when moving from a P model to T mobile. You guys seem to fight about that stuff until you can't type any longer. I'm going to assume what whatever bands work, that's what I get. Unless I get a T-Mobile specific phone.
2. But I will ask this: do the over the air bands it uses depend on the baseband ROM that is on the device? This is something I can't figure out.
3. I heard T-Mobile uses an updated boot kernel (3.0?) and ATT & others use an older boot kernel, and that if I move to T-Mobile boot kernel, I can't go back to any of the older ones. This process I seriously don't understand. Can I run a T-Mobile OS (or any OS) while using an older boot kernel ROM? I would think NO, right?
4. I don't like all of Carrier X's bloatware. I'd rather use a stripped down, cleaner ROM. I guess there are apps for that, but is it cleaner to do it with a stripped down generic ROM that I see floating around?
6. Speaking of ROM's - I saw a lot of Xetheros or whatever ROM's floating around, but it seems like there aren't any for the snapdragon-based ones. Is this true? The posts on this site don't really talk much about the snapdragon-based phones and why there aren't any ROMs for them, and why it won't work, and what, if anything, is being done to get around this. I guess the G930U is Samsung's answer to that, and allows fooling around with roms, but will the other phones ever be actually rom-able, or should I ditch this G930P and actually buy a G930U? Now that my phone THINKS it's a G930U, did that get me around some weird barrier and NOW I can update other funky roms intended for a G930U?
I'm considering selling the G7 I just got and going from a G930F (now that I'm a bit wiser). Any common sense why not to do that? I already HAVE an ATT G7 (not the sprint one I just bought), but it has a "bad signal". It gets only about 1 bar indoors, on a good day. I took it to a repair facility and they said, "nothing wrong with the antenna, it's your mainboard, don't bother just buy a new phone". Anybody have any advice on that?
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All U.S. models are built the exact same and will all accept each others firmware if done right , so any unlocked s7 you put the U firmware will essentially be a g930u other than the number stamped on the back , I dont believe the U firmware supports wifi calling or VOLTE , There is a t-mobile nougat firmware floating around if you want to try that , your att g7 if it has a hardware issue should be under warranty but if your using it with a different carrier I would flash the appropriate firmware to it and see if that fixes you signal issue and if not put it back to stock and call Samsung , as far as switching from the international model , Well i bought a international edge as soon as they release and it took a crap on me within 4 months and I was unable to warranty it , that was my only issue with using a international model but also i dont think you can get wifi calling on those either . hope that helps
edit* and yes the bands are dictated by the rom , U firmware opens all of them otherwise carrier roms unlock specific , and T-mobile nougat dowgrade back to MM will be dictated by the baseband , I know the Sprint nougat can be downgraded but not T-mobile for sure

goonygugle said:
All U.S. models are built the exact same and will all accept each others firmware if done right , so any unlocked s7 you put the U firmware will essentially be a g930u other than the number stamped on the back , I dont believe the U firmware supports wifi calling or VOLTE , There is a t-mobile nougat firmware floating around if you want to try that , your att g7 if it has a hardware issue should be under warranty but if your using it with a different carrier I would flash the appropriate firmware to it and see if that fixes you signal issue and if not put it back to stock and call Samsung , as far as switching from the international model , Well i bought a international edge as soon as they release and it took a crap on me within 4 months and I was unable to warranty it , that was my only issue with using a international model but also i dont think you can get wifi calling on those either . hope that helps
edit* and yes the bands are dictated by the rom , U firmware opens all of them otherwise carrier roms unlock specific , and T-mobile nougat dowgrade back to MM will be dictated by the baseband , I know the Sprint nougat can be downgraded but not T-mobile for sure
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The U firmware does support WiFi calling and VoLTE on T-Mobile.

myphone12345 said:
The U firmware does support WiFi calling and VoLTE on T-Mobile.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess us AT&T users just done get them features =/ , is it enabled or do you have to do something to enable those features ?

goonygugle said:
I guess us AT&T users just done get them features =/ , is it enabled or do you have to do something to enable those features ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't believe those features are supported on AT&T (probably at AT&T's own request). Perhaps that might change in the Nougat version but I wouldn't bet on it.