Rooting the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is all about standing up for your rights and doing what is necessary to remove the factory restrictions that have been put in place by Android, by your phone carrier networks, and by the phone manufacturers. Google and Android change the way the operating system would be so that applications are fenced in and cannot jump around to other apps for security reasons. Your smartphone manufacturers and phone carrier networks apply another set of locks so that you cannot remove the system apps that they want running on top of your stock Android operating system.
The system apps present a problem in their right in the sense that most of them have no reason to be installed on your device if you are not using them. By having them on your Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, you are choosing to roll with a device that is slower than it otherwise would be and you also lose out on the battery too. Contrary to popular belief, the system apps that manufacturers put on the smartphone and the custom skins they put on the smartphone have nothing to do with Android. Part of the deal that Android developers struck with these manufacturers was for them to be able to put their unique skins over the stock Android and that is what you see in the shops or when you first open the device out of the box and start playing around with the Android software.
While Android developers have not put a stop to skins, they also are not forcing skins in our direction. We can always remove the manufacturer skins by rooting the smartphone and then using root apps or custom ROMs. A custom ROM will completely replace any manufacturer skins that Samsung or HTC has put on top of the stock Android they decided to play with and either give you a pure Android experience or one that is a different skin and comes with its personal design and features. While installing a custom ROM on the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphones are still considered risky business, you can safely install them if you know what yo are doing. Sometimes a custom ROM is only available for a peritubular model number and not just the type of device, so make sure you flash them on the right one. The best way to go about custom ROM research is to find your device on the XDA-Developers forum and then check what people are saying. The titles and the descriptions available in the original post usually give all the details about what you need to install the custom ROM. Moreover, you should also find a unique forum section on the XDA-Developers website for each smartphone from a phone carrier network so you cannot go wrong much time.
The CF-Auto-Root tool that Chainfire makes for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone is based on the MMB29M.N910PVPU4DPC1 firmware build number. That is the build number that he had running on the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone when he managed to come up with this rooting tool. It does not mean that you need to have that same build number running on the smartphone before you follow this guide.
Files You Need
- Download the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910P smartphones running on the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow updates from here.
- Download the Samsung USB Drivers on the Windows computer from here.
The Odin flashing tool that we are using in this guide needs to run on a computer that is using the Windows operating system. The Odin application does not run on a MacOS or Linux distributions.
You need the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone with the SM-N910P model number to follow this guide. The CF-Auto-Root tool comes out for a range of model numbers, and flashing the file on the wrong model number can brick the device. You can find out the model number of your Sprint Note 4 smartphone by tapping on the Menu > Settings > About Device > Model Number.
The following guide is made for the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone with the SM-N910P model number running on the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow software updates. You can find out what software version of Android that your Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone is running by tapping on the Menu > Settings > About Device > Software Version.
There might be some more software updates that roll out for the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone that brings new bootloaders with them. These occasions are rare because usually they only come with new versions of Android such as jumping up from the Android 4.4.4 KitKat updates to the Android 5.0 Lollipop updates. However, they technically could still arrive for smaller updates that are based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. In those times, the CF-Auto-Root tool might temporarily stop working until Chainfire updates the files, so they are compatible. For Chainfire to be able to do that, he relies on people like us to post the new recovery image files over at the CF-Auto-Root thread made at the XDA-Developers website. Once he sees your messages, he then applies the necessary changes on his end of the rooting file and then publishes them. Those updates are automatically updated in our guides because we link directly to Chainfire’s CF-Auto-Root tool repository page.
Rooting the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910P (Sprint) smartphone running on the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow software updates
- Unlock the Developer Options menu on the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone so you can use the settings available within the menu.
- Enable the USB Debugging Mode option from inside the Developer Options menu that you just unlocked so that you can connect to the computer and the software allows for some more developments to the operating system.
- Run the Samsung USB Drivers on the Windows computer so that you can connect the smartphone to the computer and it will be detected by the Odin flashing application.
- Extract the rooting file to the desktop of the computer so that you can use the Odin flashing tool and the rooting files that are inside and have no popped out as individual files on the desktop.
- Boot the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone into the download mode and then connect it to the computer with the USB cable that you usually use to charge the battery on the device.
- Double-click and run the Odin flashing application that is on the desktop of the computer so that you can see the buttons and the user interface of your flashing tool are on display.
- Check that you can see a blue or yellow ID: COM port and an “added” message coming from the Odin flashing tool’s user interface. (No color here means that you need to get the Samsung USB Drivers working on the computer because they are current not working. Those who have installed the driver file from the Samsung website and it did not work can try installing the universal Windows ADB Drivers on the computer instead and see if that helps. People who have tried both sets of drivers and still do not see the ID: COM lighting up is likely not using the Windows computer under an administrator’s account. Log into an administrator’s account and the flashing tool should work).
- Do not change any of the default settings from the Odin user interface.
- Click the AP button and then browse the desktop location for the CF-Auto-Root file that is ending in the tar.md5 file extension and upload it to this location in the flashing tool.
- Click the Start button on the Odin flashing tool user interface and then check the phone’s display.
- You should see lots of text rolling down including text showing detected devices, mounting the system and cache, resetting the SuperSU, running SUperSU installer, boot image patcher and then some important messages which you should read.
- Once you have comprehended the important words about it boot looping a few times and not to interrupt it, it is time to check for text that shows it is unmounting the system, restoring the stock recovery, cleaning up and then rebooting the smartphone in ten seconds.
In conclusion, that is how to root the Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 SM-N910P smartphone when it is running on the Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow software updates. The version of the CF-Auto-Root tool for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 when it is operating on any of the Marshmallow updates is called a systemless root which means it does not need to modify the /system partition when it goes about its work. The results are a supposedly ‘cleaner’ root for people on the device, and everything still works the same. There isn’t much different other than the device will be unrooted now each time you enter the recovery mode and then apply a factory reset.
Once your Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone reboots back into the normal mode, you are free to browse the Google Play Store and begin installing the root applications that require a root user. These are the apps such as the Titanium Backup application, Vider4Android, Dumpster, Greenify, ROM Manager, ROM Toolbox and Xposed Framework. Those who don’t want to rush into installing the applications that require root access to the internal system to run before they can use them ought to open the Google Play Store app and search for the basic root checker application instead. I say the basic versions because it is the free version of the app that will happily check to see whether your root status is the way it should be or not. Those of you wanting to learn more about rooting the Android operating system can check out all the things there are to do with a rooted Android that we have collected which includes increasing the hardware performance, so the device runs as if it has a faster processor, increasing the battery life, so the device needs to be charged less often, increasing the RAM, installing a custom recovery, ROM, kernel and more.
Moreover, those of you Sprint Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone owners who did install the root checker application and then check the root status for it to only say that your device is unrooted can try a few things to find out why that might be instead of giving up right away. We recommend checking that the smartphone is getting into the recovery mode like it is supposed to during the rooting process of the CF-Auto-Root tool. The way to do that is to hold down the hardware button combination for the recovery mode after you get the message on the display letting you know that it is going to reboot in ten seconds, and then as soon as that happens, boot it into recovery mode before the Android operating system boots up into normal mode. Doing so should allow the SuperSU application to be installed and enabled correctly, so the device is officially rooted.
Furthermore, it is also feasible to think that trying another version of the Android flashing application will fix the problem because the version that Chainfire bundles in with the rooting file is only one version, and many cases are documented online where people try another version, and it works. Therefore, it is best to at least try a few versions of the Odin flashing application on your computer and then flashing the same versions of the CF-Auto-Root tool and seeing if that fixes the problem before we get into more challenging scenarios.
In addition to getting the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 into the recovery mode by hand and trying other Odin applications, people might want to head over to the Sam Mobile website and flash another firmware. Those individuals who have a device that is SIM unlocked can flash firmware for the same model number but from any phone carrier network if there is more than one phone carrier network using the same model number. Moreover, those with the same phone carrier network might also find other firmware builds available to download, and they might have more success getting the rooting to work than the one you are using at the moment.