Development [RECOVERY][UNOFFICIAL] TWRP for Galaxy Tab S8 Series (Snapdragon)

[old_fart]

I have been watching the S8/S22 telegram as well and I am a little confused now. Because normally you patch the AP you extracted from the firmware with magisk and flash that with odin and your rooted. However I see people talking about patching the boot img and the vbmeta and flashing that for root. I have never seen a guide that showed to just patch boot and vbmeta although I have never looked either. Im patiently waiting for this developer to finish twrp for a13. I prefer to root it that way for a few reasons. If you flash a magisk module or lsposed module and you bootloop because Android 13 just came out so bugs will happen. How do you fix that without recovery? You would have to flash stock and do everything over again. With twrp I make backup and if I cant uninstall module, I restore backup.

Yes you can root android 13 oneui I heard on the s8 ultra use magisk canary instead of stable.

how to root it exactly I don't know at the moment what method to use.

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Loading 13 with odin was very straight-forward. Is done. I used HOME_CSC versus the CSC file to not factory reset and retain my settings... The discovery doc file says that I am Smarter and More Powerful now. Well, I seriously doubt that. I just re-ran Geekbench 5 and it says : 1173 and 3131, so those numbers are slightly less than with 12. I wonder how much new bloatware is running in the background stealing the limited, available clock cycles ?
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Time to grab Magisk next.

Geekbench ML is 466. An 'no', you do not patch vbmeta but rather ( stock file next to boot image ) is re-written to toggle verity and verification to disabled . . .

Oh. Oh. I did read the act of re-writing the vbmeta file is a mandatory factory reset. Boo...

Disabling that vbmeta means you cannot buy girl scout cookies with your credit card using the tablet. No walking up to the Starbucks register and bonking your tablet on the swiper to pay for your morning cup of joe.

I re-read your post and saw where you say 'patch to AP' and that is not correct. You pull the itty bitty boot image file from the AP and patch that with Magisk. Hope everyone is safe and having a nice turkey day.

 

[Techguy777]

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Loading 13 with odin was very straight-forward. Is done. I used HOME_CSC versus the CSC file to not factory reset and retain my settings... The discovery doc file says that I am Smarter and More Powerful now. Well, I seriously doubt that. I just re-ran Geekbench 5 and it says : 1173 and 3131, so those numbers are slightly less than with 12. I wonder how much new bloatware is running in the background stealing the limited, available clock cycles ?
.
Time to grab Magisk next.

Geekbench ML is 466. An 'no', you do not patch vbmeta but rather ( stock file next to boot image ) is re-written to toggle verity and verification to disabled . . .

Oh. Oh. I did read the act of re-writing the vbmeta file is a mandatory factory reset. Boo...

Disabling that vbmeta means you cannot buy girl scout cookies with your credit card using the tablet. No walking up to the Starbucks register and bonking your tablet on the swiper to pay for your cup of joe.

When I said patch vbmeta I meant installing the vbmeta dummy disabled file on the opening page. Yes that means factory reset is mandatory.

The part im not understanding is the bootimg how do you get just the boot img?
Are you using the kernel from this or telegram thread to patch in magisk?

What slot does bootimg go into with odin?

I would like to see a guide with this method if you know one please let me know?

 

[old_fart]

When I said patch vbmeta I meant installing the vbmeta dummy disabled file on the opening page. Yes that means factory reset is mandatory.

The part im not understanding is the bootimg how do you get just the boot img?
Are you using the kernel from this or telegram thread to patch in magisk?

What slot does bootimg go into with odin?

I would like to see a guide with this method if you know one please let me know?

Watch Anthony's youtube video to clear up some confusion. This worked fine on my older tablet.

 

[Techguy777]

Watch Anthony's youtube video to clear up some confusion. This worked fine on my older tablet.

Thanks for that video now im all caught up. I didn't know you could do just the boot.img on samsung. Its nice to have a video to follow along with. I always ask and no one ever says anything. They act like same way its always been but then come to find out its not the same way. I still prefer TWRP, Kernel, and flash magisk. That way you have a recovery to stop bootloops.

 

[old_fart]

Thanks for that video now im all caught up. I didn't know you could do just the boot.img on samsung. Its nice to have a video to follow along with. I always ask and no one ever says anything. They act like same way its always been but then come to find out its not the same way. I still prefer TWRP, Kernel, and flash magisk. That way you have a recovery to stop boot loops.

I agree it is a big mess when different information comes from different places. What's a poor boy supposed to do ?

Is it because different instructions are tied to the older Exynos chip . . . then the newest Snapdragon chip ( like in the ultra ) have a totally different way of doing things ? Does this mangle up @afaneh92 and his work ?

The twrp mothership keeps loudly beating the mantra, 'must disable dm-verity in the fstab' or you're guaranteed a boot looping brick... . . . . Huh ?

So Magisk ( thankfully ! ! ! ) gives us root. Magisk comes first and not last like the old way. Then we're still missing a step or two to make twrp happy ? ? ?

Like in the newer pixel phones, they have to 'fastboot flash vbmeta vbmeta.img --disable-verity' to have custom kernels. What about recovery there ? The pixels have 'NO' recovery. Waa waa waa . . .

Update Saturday night:
Received a 'data-only' sim from google fi. My hope was that the internal tablet radios would give me 5G speed data ! Nope. Got LTE 4G, band 41. Carried the plastic slab out to the quiet street and turned 'on' the cell tester app. It said I had -94 dbM of signal strength. That is not a great level and then also not a bad level.

 

[Techguy777]

Im curious about a couple things. When you guys reboot to recovery after flashing with odin does it make you feel like your tablet is broken when it goes black for about 25 seconds or so?

It does that even with stock recovery but its nuts the first time it happened I thought what the hell.

My next question is have anyone use the twrp and kernel on one ui 5?

 

[jhill110]

Im curious about a couple things. When you guys reboot to recovery after flashing with odin does it make you feel like your tablet is broken when it goes black for about 25 seconds or so?

It does that even with stock recovery but its nuts the first time it happened I thought what the hell.

Yeah, I thought something had gone wrong. I'm not a patient man but I have learned to be when it comes to this stuff.
Back in the Note 4 days when I started doing this, wait, wait, wait most of the time would pay off.
I miss those days. We had a guy that was a GREAT developer of roms for the device. @tx_dbs_tx a was a mad scientist.

 

[Techguy777]

Yeah, I thought something had gone wrong. I'm not a patient man but I have learned to be when it comes to this stuff.
Back in the Note 4 days when I started doing this, wait, wait, wait most of the time would pay off.
I miss those days. We had a guy that was a GREAT developer of roms for the device. @tx_dbs_tx a was a mad scientist.

This developer is well seasoned for sure. I don't consider everyone who complies a rom a developer because their not. I made 3 custom roms back in android 8 and 9. You just follow guides and people will tell people their developers and it goes right to there head. However this guy for the tab s8 is someone who I say is a developer. He has been building for like 10 years or more if you go through is android file host. He can actually figure out problems to and thats key.

Just so everyone knows Im on android 13 one ui 5.0. I flashed twrp 3.6.2 and the custom kernel the latest one and did everything like before it works perfectly on one ui 5. I know I like to hear from other people things worked.

 

[jhill110]

Just so everyone knows Im on android 13 one ui 5.0. I flashed twrp 3.6.2 and the custom kernel the latest one and did everything like before it works perfectly on one ui 5. I know I like to hear from other people things worked.

Very glad to hear that. I was going to hold off on 13 to let any bugs get worked out but I guess it's ok.
What do you think of 13 and one ui 5?
Did you upgrade with odin and home csc?

 

[Techguy777]

Very glad to hear that. I was going to hold off on 13 to let any bugs get worked out but I guess it's ok.
What do you think of 13 and one ui 5?
Did you upgrade with odin and home csc?

Yes I used odin but I have apps backed up with swiftback up and I have only had my tablet like 10 days so I just used csc and played it safe. If you are unencrypted and you boot from odin back into odin and flash twrp and root and kernel you could update without ever missing a beat. But if you don't boot into recovery and Miss the timing you will be forced to do it all from scratch again because your internal storage will try to encrypt. I've had that happen on my Poco f3. Android 13 seems better if you link your tablet to messages from your phone. I did use the xar csc because it came out yesterday

 

[Techguy777]

Very glad to hear that. I was going to hold off on 13 to let any bugs get worked out but I guess it's ok.
What do you think of 13 and one ui 5?
Did you upgrade with odin and home csc?

So far my favorite feature is the enhanced text extractor. I have Android 12 with the pixel launcher on my Poco and I love this select text option in the recent menu Samsung's is a little bit more complicated. But now you can do it right from gallery from the picture itself you don't have to load up bixby. I think that feature and the new Pixel 6 voice typing of the two best features that Android's got and probably the last 7 years. I have the pixel 6 voice typing on my Poco f3 they ported it by making my phone say it's a Pixel 6. It's amazing you can type out whole paragraphs with the microphone and it reads 95% accurate of what you're actually saying that is an awesome feature

 

[old_fart]

Saw the OP got updated yesterday. Inspected the recovery image and was 'surprised' to see the version is no longer twrp-3.6.2_12-4_afaneh92-gts8u but updated to twrp-3.7.0_12-1_afaneh92-gts8u

Wow so then possibly @afaneh92 ( the code master ) will tell us shortly and I am jumping the gun by mentioning it . . .

 

[afaneh92]

Saw the OP got updated yesterday. Inspected the recovery image and was 'surprised' to see the version is no longer twrp-3.6.2_12-4_afaneh92-gts8u but updated to twrp-3.7.0_12-1_afaneh92-gts8u

Wow so then possibly @afaneh92 ( the code master ) will tell us shortly and I am jumping the gun by mentioning it . . .

As you can see in the changelog which is my github repo, Yes you can now reserve more space for system

 

[Techguy777]

Rw system file is on telegram if anyone is interested. Along with twrp 3.7

 

[afaneh92]

Rw system file is on telegram if anyone is interested. Along with twrp 3.7

Worked for you?

 

[Techguy777]

Worked for you?

no I didn't get it to work

 

[Techguy777]

Worked for you?

the latest twrp 3.7 works like a charm thank you

 

[usnbrendon]

***Moderator Announcement***
Keep it civil, folks. While you're welcome to differ in opinion, you must treat one another with respect and civility. Flaming and disrespect will not be tolerated.

Thanks... I was kinda wondering how much further things would devolve before a forum moderator chimed in with a friendly reminder. I almost stopped researching this topic..was literally about to just close the thread & delete the bookmark until your post scrolled into view.

 

[usnbrendon]

Heres a question everyone is there a place in the US where you can get the S8 plus tablet with 5G without a carrier?

Im not finding anything but sometimes you guys know people in Hong Kong that sells them to US.

Purchase direct from Samsung but be forewarned the USA 5G variants will all have Snapdragon chipsets and thus UNLOCKABLE BOOTLOADERS. The way I circumvented the bootloader issue is by pre-ordering the SM-X900 (GTS8Ultra Wi-Fi only) and trading in my Tab S6 LTE on T-mobile... giving up mobile data sucked a bit at first, but the ease of using my galaxy S22 ultra as a wifi Hotspot for it makes up for the lack of 5GUC.

Otherwise, you might find someone selling an Exynos based Tab S8 with 5G in Europe or Asia but beware that the radio basebands /specific freqs & bandwidths may not be fully compatible or supported reliably by U.S. cellular carriers..... So do your homework thoroughly prior to letting someone try to sell you a whopping bill of goods you couldn't use rooted or not!

Cheers.

 

[Techguy777]

Purchase direct from Samsung but be forewarned the USA 5G variants will all have Snapdragon chipsets and thus UNLOCKABLE BOOTLOADERS. The way I circumvented the bootloader issue is by pre-ordering the SM-X900 (GTS8Ultra Wi-Fi only) and trading in my Tab S6 LTE on T-mobile... giving up mobile data sucked a bit at first, but the ease of using my galaxy S22 ultra as a wifi Hotspot for it makes up for the lack of 5GUC.

Otherwise, you might find someone selling an Exynos based Tab S8 with 5G in Europe or Asia but beware that the radio basebands /specific freqs & bandwidths may not be fully compatible or supported reliably by U.S. cellular carriers..... So do your homework thoroughly prior to letting someone try to sell you a whopping bill of goods you couldn't use rooted or not!

Cheers.

There are no exynos version's of the Tab S8 and actually if I bought the south Korean ultra 5g off amazon I could have done that and had an unlockable bootloader with 5G.