I would like to thank everyone who helped me since this was my first time attempting a real flash and not just an ADB command or updating with a patch, I have never done anything I thought could hurt but I am a little skeptical because of the carrier to unlocked thing.
No issues!
Freddie's assistance around lunch time was perfect. I was done within the hour and installed some apps on WiFi and headed back to work.
Yes, you need the modded ODIN. Also, unzip the firmware file once it's downloaded. In it should be an AP, CP, CSC, Home_CSC and BL files.
- Ensure your phone drivers are installed.
- Turn the phone off
- Boot your phone into Download mode.
- Open Modded ODIN
- Connect USB cable. Once your PC recognizes the phone, ODIN will show COM0 (I think COM0) near the top left corner.
- Click on BL button, navigate to the BL file from the download and select it.
- Do the same for AP and CP files.
- For CSC, select the CSC file from the download, NOT the Home_CSC. Pretty sure you leave the USER_DATA blank, although I always second guess myself when trying to help others.
- Once you have the 4 files selected, hit start. It'll take a few minutes for it to transfer and flash the files..
Thanks so much, this was perfect and worked flawlessly.
My phone is now a 970U1UEU1ASBA build.
It does say that my "Service Provider SW ver" has a SAOMC with VZW in the name and then at the bottom of that section it says VZW/VZW/VZW.
It looks like I have WIFI CALLING as well as VoLTE. I have zero Verizon apps.
The unlocked version cannot uninstall Facebook but I will do that via ADB this afternoon.
I also noticed I gained a few things that did not exist for me on Verizon's. I don't use Verizon's "Caller ID" crap but now I have a caller ID \ spam protection service that Samsung offers through Hiya. That's cool.
There is also a "Visual Voicemail" - I don't use Verizon's voicemail because I forward my VM to a Google Voice number on "DND" so I can have unlimited voicemail and Google e-mails me a transcript of it that I can use at a later date. Is VMM any good? Didn't know about this, only seen it mentioned from other people but thought it was something for specific carriers.
I don't know if GBoard Beta updated or what but my Google icon on there looks a bit different, too.
Anyway, thank you so much -- you guys rock, and especially Freddie. Now I'll flash all the time.
---------- Post added at 03:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:14 PM ----------
Few thoughts on the most recent exchange:
1. Heimdall is a Linux tool, I'm pretty sure - I don't think a Windows version exists. Need to use Odin if you're on Windows
2. USC is US Cellular's CSC. The US unlocked model is G970U1, with various CSCs.
3. Technically you can plug any carrier's region into SamFirm to get U1 firmware, but you won't get any bloat regardless of which version you go with. The different regions might give you small carrier customizations to the settings layout, but otherwise I don't think there's much difference. I always use XAA if I'm downloading U1, but I really don't think it matters much
I wanted to add to this and let
Freddie also know -- I tried three different "unlocked" firmwares through this process and all 3 ended up giving me the exact same ZIP file with the same contents. It is completely transparent -- the USC and XAA and whatever I put in my original question are all the same.
at least for now
