The 10th generation of Galaxy Note is here, and Samsung introduced a second ‘Plus’ variant this time. Long time Note lovers may stumble on a weird confusion in this naming scheme, as the Korean OEM did have two more Galaxy Note 10 (10.1 to be precise) devices in their inventory.
Kidding apart, Samsung also prepared dedicated 5G variants on top of both regular and the plus sized Galaxy Note 10. The following table should clarify the common uncertainties regarding the version numbering and internal platform of Samsung’s latest and greatest phablet.
- Galaxy Note 10
- Global (Exynos): SM-N970F
- US (Snapdragon): SM-N970U (Carrier locked) / SM-N970U1 (Unlocked)
- Galaxy Note 10+
- Global (Exynos): SM-N975F
- US (Snapdragon): SM-N975U (Carrier locked) / SM-N975U1 (Unlocked)
- Galaxy Note 10 5G
- Global (Exynos): SM-N971F
- US (Snapdragon): SM-N971U
- Galaxy Note 10+ 5G
- Global (Exynos): SM-N976F
- US (Snapdragon): SM-N976U
While you can’t flash the international firmware on your US Galaxy Note 10 unit (and vice-versa), you can easily unbrand the phone you bought from the wireless carrier by flashing the unlocked Snapdragon firmware. The concept is same as Galaxy S10 lineup, which was discussed in this article.
In terms of update frequency, carrier unlocked Galaxy phones are lately getting faster OTAs than their other counterparts lately. However, you may lose some features (like camera night mode in case of S9/Note 9) or carrier specific utilities if you convert from, for example, Verizon to T-Mobile variant.
If you want to get your hands on the day-one update (and future ones), you should visit this (for US Galaxy Note 10) and this (for US Galaxy Note 10+) threads. They are maintained by XDA member iBowToAndroid and always contain up-to-date firmware binaries for manual flashing.
Received my Note 10 U1, tested it on original firmware XAA(build: ASGO) and just now completed flashing to T-MO without updating to ASH4 build and want the phone to find and update firmware to see if OTA works. To get to download mode, I needed to press Vol + and – and power and the same time.
Flashed 5 files: BL, AP, CP, regular CSC and USERDATA. Device shows T-Mobile logo at boot, has Advanced Messaging, Video Call and I don’t see any bloatware except for couple of T-Mo apps.
Went through setup and was able to get new OTA with August 1 patch(screenshot)
(Source)
If you want to do the job by hand, use something like Frija to download the firmware directly from Samsung update servers instead of downloading the read-to-flash packages from these repos.
You also need to find a suitable patched version of ODIN (aka the internal Samsung flashing tool) to bypass the version checking. Further details can be found in the aforementioned threads.
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Galaxy Note 10
Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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