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Flashing Firmware / Bootloader / Modem

Hi,
I´m a neewbie to Samsung. My phone is a S6 SM-G920F, Baseband G920FXXU1AOCW
I came form an HTC and I´ve seen that flashing things are very different. So here are my questions:
1. I think, my bootloader is unlocked but I didin´t know for sure. So how can I check this?
(My HTV showed me this by using fastboot, didn´t know if there is fastboot with Samsung and how to start it - only know the download-mode and how to enter TWRP recovery)
2. Flashing firmware via Odin (i. e. from sammobile.com) means to loose my root again, right?
3. If I loose root, where do I get custom Firmwares and how do I flash them (if this is possible)?
4. If not, is it enough to flash bootloader and modem through Odin?
All answers are appreciated. Thanks in advanced.
Maybe someone can link me to an step to step instruction...

Fastboot is android doesn't matter who makes the phone.
If you flash a rom from sammobile then you will go to whichever stock you pick.
Other ROMs are available here. The phone is new. There aren't many yet. Cyanogen mod isn't available yet.
Root is available by flashing cfautoroot with Odin. You will need to get the specific one.
You can replace the recovery by flashing twrp team win recovery project with Odin.
You can flash boot loader and modem. Make sure you get the right region. The modem frequencies are different in different places.
You may find flashing a whole ROM even stock will fail. This is because the partitions are not the same size for all s6 stock ROMs. Don't ask me why. You can open the tar find which file stopped the flash delete it from the tar and flash again.

quatzar said:
Fastboot is android doesn't matter who makes the phone.
If you flash a rom from sammobile then you will go to whichever stock you pick.
Other ROMs are available here. The phone is new. There aren't many yet. Cyanogen mod isn't available yet.
Root is available by flashing cfautoroot with Odin. You will need to get the specific one.
You can replace the recovery by flashing twrp team win recovery project with Odin.
You can flash boot loader and modem. Make sure you get the right region. The modem frequencies are different in different places.
You may find flashing a whole ROM even stock will fail. This is because the partitions are not the same size for all s6 stock ROMs. Don't ask me why. You can open the tar find which file stopped the flash delete it from the tar and flash again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for answering. My questions had an other intention, I think.
My S6 is already rooted and I have a custom recovery (TWRP) :good:
I would like to know if you have to flash a whole firmware or only bootloader/modem? Because I didn´t seen a post here for a full firmware yet.
I am not familiar with the differences between htc whole firmware and samsung bootloader/modem
Actually I am on Firmware G920FXXU1AOCW. But there are newer ones like XXU1AOE3 or XXU1AOE4.
In the days of my htc you couldn´t flash only bootloader or modem, you had to flash a whole firmware (like radio, drivers, bootloader, modem etc.)
Flashing only modem and bootloader will it update i. e. touchscreen drivers? If not, where do I get this ones? You know, because of root I don´t get OTA´s anymore...

The modem just controls how your phone hardware connects to carrier towers etc.
The boot loader is a tiny thing that tells the processor where and how to load the OS.
The software for pretty much everything is in /system.
Many of these releases are the same software, region specific. The dates are fairly unimportant for the same version number. They generally reference the time when they were uploaded by someone. Not that they have updates and fixes.

Just wanted to know can I change my phone logo MetroPCS to say T-mobile with all the T-mobile add on. I have a Samsung Galaxy s6 by MetroPCS

SOLVED: How to flash baseband/modem (modem.img) with Odin?

Before I get to my question, a quick background, which might help with explaining my question. So recently I switched to another cellular carrier on my unlocked S6 Edge (G925F) and now I would like to flash the baseband from the firmware corresponding to my new carrier in order to get better/proper connectivity. I downloaded and flashed the new carrier's firmware .tar.md5 using Odin, however, in the process of flashing, Odin threw a FAIL message when flashing the hidden.img file. So I had to manually extract and flash that file again, and it worked.
Anyway, it seems like, because of the aforementioned Odin FAIL message, the flashing process did not include the new modem.img file. So now I would like to manually flash that in order to get better service on my new carrier. So how do I do that? I tried flashing just the modem.img file with Odin by selecting it in the "CP" field, however, the flashing process gets stuck on "File analysis..." and nothing gets flashed. Am I doing something wrong? Can I flash that baseband some other way?
UPDATE, SOLVED:
I figured out the solution. I had to manually create a new .tar archive (with 7zip) containing just the modem.bin file. When I tried to flash that with Odin (by adding it under the "CP" field), it successfully went through.

tahaa7 said:
Before I get to my question, a quick background, which might help with explaining my question. So recently I switched to another cellular carrier on my unlocked S6 Edge (G925F) and now I would like to flash the baseband from the firmware corresponding to my new carrier in order to get better/proper connectivity. I downloaded and flashed the new carrier's firmware .tar.md5 using Odin, however, in the process of flashing, Odin threw a FAIL message when flashing the hidden.img file. So I had to manually extract and flash that file again, and it worked.
Anyway, it seems like, because of the aforementioned Odin FAIL message, the flashing process did not include the new modem.img file. So now I would like to manually flash that in order to get better service on my new carrier. So how do I do that? I tried flashing just the modem.img file with Odin by selecting it in the "CP" field, however, the flashing process gets stuck on "File analysis..." and nothing gets flashed. Am I doing something wrong? Can I flash that baseband some other way?
UPDATE, SOLVED:
I figured out the solution. I had to manually create a new .tar archive (with 7zip) containing just the modem.bin file. When I tried to flash that with Odin (by adding it under the "CP" field), it successfully went through.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
May I please ask you, how did you get a firmware with a modem binary inside it? So far I've downloaded two different firmwares for this device, latest baseband versions, and none of them ships a modem.bin or anything similar. I'm totally puzzled.

zogoibi said:
May I please ask you, how did you get a firmware with a modem binary inside it? So far I've downloaded two different firmwares for this device, latest baseband versions, and none of them ships a modem.bin or anything similar. I'm totally puzzled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So were you able to get the latest baseband /modem?? And how??

Tried to downgrade device now can't get it to flash any rom

Hi, I have been trying to downgrade my s7 to 6.0.1 and I downloaded all the correct firmware files and flashed it in odin but it failed on system img.
I then tried to flash back to the latest rom and it failed on that too. So after seeking advice someone told me to check the erase nand option in odin so I did that with still no luck. I've even tried to flash the pit file for my device and nothings working...
If anyone can help or give me any pointers that would be Great, TIA.

Shaun98 said:
Hi, I have been trying to downgrade my s7 to 6.0.1 and I downloaded all the correct firmware files and flashed it in odin but it failed on system img.
I then tried to flash back to the latest rom and it failed on that too. So after seeking advice someone told me to check the erase nand option in odin so I did that with still no luck. I've even tried to flash the pit file for my device and nothings working...
If anyone can help or give me any pointers that would be Great, TIA.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To flash it back to your Stock Nougat Rom you have to download the correct firmware for your country, place the files in the right tabs with Odin then flash. It's very very easy and there are lots of tutorials on how to do it. If the process stops at "initialisation" then the EFS partition is corrupt and needs to be flashed first.
Also please note you cannot downgrade to an older boot loader, that means once you have upgraded to Nougat 7 the boot loader is binary 2 and you cannot downgrade it to binary 1 which is what MM uses.
The only way to flash back to a previous version of Android is to flash a custom rom with the old boot loader but it is a slightly complicated process for the beginner

Thanks I've used odin loads in the past. Just haven't had any need to for a year or so so I'm a bit behind.
I've just downloaded the right firmware again. Does it matter if the nand has been erased or that the pit file has been changed?

cooltt said:
To flash it back to your Stock Nougat Rom you have to download the correct firmware for your country, place the files in the right tabs with Odin then flash. It's very very easy and there are lots of tutorials on how to do it. If the process stops at "initialisation" then the EFS partition is corrupt and needs to be flashed first.
Also please note you cannot downgrade to an older boot loader, that means once you have upgraded to Nougat 7 the boot loader is binary 2 and you cannot downgrade it to binary 1 which is what MM uses.
The only way to flash back to a previous version of Android is to flash a custom rom with the old boot loader but it is a slightly complicated process for the beginner
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also is naugat and oreo the same bootloader?

Shaun98 said:
Also is naugat and oreo the same bootloader?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, Nougat is binary 2 and Oreo is binary 3
---------- Post added at 02:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:54 PM ----------
Shaun98 said:
Thanks I've used odin loads in the past. Just haven't had any need to for a year or so so I'm a bit behind.
I've just downloaded the right firmware again. Does it matter if the nand has been erased or that the pit file has been changed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, it does, its part of the EFS partition, Try flash with new firmware if no joy then you need an image of EFS partition to flash first.

Can't flash stock firmware

Hi! A while ago I decided to flash TWRP and a custom rom (LineageOS) onto my S7. After a while I decided that I would prefer the stock OS. So I tried flashing the stock ROM with Odin and a zip file downloaded from SamMobile. But it would always fail when it got up to flashing system.img. So I tried another firmware using SamFirm, the same problem persisted. So I tried flashing the stock ROM using FlashFire, but no partitions showed up. Smart Switch and Kies 3 just said that my device is not compatible. If anyone can help me, it would be massively appreciated.
P.S. I am doing everything right, I've done this exact process on many other Samsung phones.

Are you extracting the AP, BL, CP and CSC files from the zip, or just putting the zip straight into Odin?

MuscularCrab said:
Hi! A while ago I decided to flash TWRP and a custom rom (LineageOS) onto my S7. After a while I decided that I would prefer the stock OS. So I tried flashing the stock ROM with Odin and a zip file downloaded from SamMobile. But it would always fail when it got up to flashing system.img. So I tried another firmware using SamFirm, the same problem persisted. So I tried flashing the stock ROM using FlashFire, but no partitions showed up. Smart Switch and Kies 3 just said that my device is not compatible. If anyone can help me, it would be massively appreciated.
P.S. I am doing everything right, I've done this exact process on many other Samsung phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
please post the error showing in Odin

SM-G930W8 Stock Firmware Link 2022?

Hey all,
I have an S7/SM-G930W8/heroltebmc and had it running LineageOS for a while and was loving it... Until I found out it's locked to a carrier and apparently will refuse to unlock with a custom ROM installed.
I tried installing stock rom from https://desktop.firmware.mobi/ and got stuck on boot screen; tried installing stock rom and recovery and got stuck in a bootloop. Now I need to recover from odin and I figured the best way to do so would be to find stock firmware for my device, except the link above only seems to provide .img files, and the external links on the site lead to SammMobile (paywall locked), Updato (broken download links), and Samsung-Updates (site cannot be reached.)
Does anyone know where I can go to get the stock firmware for my device or have a copy they'd be willing to share? Or alternately know of a better way to get back to stock from where I'm at so I can unlock this thing and get back to enjoying lineage?