Samsung devices like any other OEM smartphone come with a locked bootloader. And if you are into rooting then, you should know that for rooting and gaining admin privileges, you need to have an unlocked bootloader. But, Samsung devices in the US are pretty difficult to root due to the security of Samsung Knox. Because Samsung Knox makes it annoying as it tends to break a lot of things. However, thanks to the XDA developer’s exploit, users of the Snapdragon variant of Galaxy S7, Galaxy S8, and Galaxy Note 8 were able to root the devices.
And the same developers are back with an exploit that allows the users of the Snapdragon variant of Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+, and Galaxy Note 9 to root the device. But there is a catch that you need to be on a certain version of Android OS in order to root your device. Because the rooting option is not available for the latest firmware of Android installed on the above-listed devices. So, without any further ado, let us get straight into the article itself:
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How to Root Snapdragon Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 9?
Below are the list of pre-requisites that you need to make sure you have before you can root your device.
Pre-requisites
- Currently, Snapdragon variants of the Samsung Galaxy S9, Galaxy S9+ and Galaxy Note 9 running Android 8 or 8.1 Oreo can have root access.
- You need to run a combination ROM that is used by Samsung for testing their devices in their factory.
- Note that the maximum battery cap will be reduced to 80% after flashing your device.
- Samsung Knox, Secure Folder and Samsung Pay will continue to work even after you go ahead with rooting procedure.
- This rooting method is without the Magisk and it uses SuperSU.
- SafetyNet attestation will not work, unfortunately.
Steps to Root
The guide for all the three mentioned devices is the same. You can take a look below or follow the specific guide from XDA for any of the device by clicking the link given below:
- Download the file for your specific Galaxy device from the link above.
- In odin folder flash the combo firmware
- Once the combo is booted up run the root bat. When done phone will reboot to download.
- In odin flash the bootswap.tar.md5 file. What this does are swap the boot and recovery images which allow the system to be mounted rw.
- Now when done flashing you need to hold the buttons to boot to recovery but since we swapped boot and recovery images it will boot the system.
- Now put your phone in airplane mode. This must be done whenever using Flashfire. Copy the system.img, vendor.img, and ODM zip files to your phone.
- In Flashfire, choose zip and select the odm zip. Then choose firmware and choose the system.img and the vendor.img. Then choose data wipe and wipe user and system data (the default choices). Make sure inject super su is NOT enabled. Disable it. Do not let flashfire inject root!!
- Now click flash. When finished you will have to hold buttons to reboot to recovery until you see boot animation. You must do this on every reboot. If you do not it will reboot to stock recovery. If it reboots to stock recovery just reboot system and hold buttons to reboot to recovery again.
- When rom is booted up your computer will not recognize the phone for mtp file transfer. Adb does still work so you can transfer stuff that way (you need to switch to ptp transfer method in the dropdown) or use USB adapter and use a thumb drive.
- Biometrics do not work so don’t try to set up fingerprint or face recognition.
You can follow the guides mentioned in the below links for the specific smartphones by clicking the button below:
Recognized Contributor jrkruse, Senior Member klabit87, Senior Member me2151, and Member GSM-CHEN. They all spent countless hours working on getting root access for these devices.
So, there you have it from my side in this post. I hope you guys like this post and were able to root your Samsung Galaxy devices Snapdragon variant using the above-mentioned methods. Let us know in the comments below if you come across any issues or errors. Until the next post…Cheers!