Last Updated on October 30, 2022 by Mathew Diekhake

It’s easy enough to find working rooting methods for most smartphones, but the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 SM-N960U isn’t one where things come easy at all. According to PhoneMore.com, the SM-N960U model number is for the Qualcomm processor. When I go to check the TWRP files, there is no official TWRP for the Qualcomm variant of the Note 9; there are only files for the Snapdragon and Exynos variants. So that means you will not be able to root via a custom recovery image at the moment. And that generally rules out Magisk.

So I did some further reading. One senior member (CD from Tennessee) on XDA Developers who owns the Note 9 SM-N960U and was able to get root access says you first need to unlock the bootloader for the SM-N960U which costs money to do. This is rare. I’ve never seen unlocking the bootloader requiring money. But if you want to pay to unlock, you can check this post on XDA Developers.

But before paying you need to make sure you can run the now outdated firmware that is required. According to the same XDA member, you need to downgrade the firmware to an Android security patch version dated February 1, 2021, or older. You might be able to find older Samsung firmware files using one of the free Samsung firmware update tools, but generally, they show the most recent firmware files rather than all the firmware files. Other independent sites have scraped Samsung’s servers over the years, but when you download from them, you have to assume they are trustworthy. And I’m not guaranteeing they are, hence why I recommend you generally download the files via one of the free update tools that download the firmware directly from Samsung.

Notes:

  • Is PhoneMore a reliable website? According to Google, it is because it currently gets considerably more traffic than I do. Assuming they deserve that traffic, it does seem a reliable site that knows smartphone hardware specifications. Assuming that is true and we know the SM-N960U comes with a Qualcomm processor, there is no other information on the internet that we could find for rooting this smartphone successfully.
  • The SM-N960U smartphone looks like a nightmare to root in general. This is not one of the device’s where getting root access is going to be very desirable unless you really need it. If you have any more information, please leave it in the comments.

In conclusion, that is all the information we have at the moment regarding working root methods for the Note 9 SM-N960U on Android 10.