My problem is very simple at its core and I find myself resorting to extreme solutions such as factory reset to solve it. However, I am okay with this. I would like to know the best way to unroot and factory reset my Note 4 SM-N910U.
What follows is the original story and my attempts to fix it. It's rather long, so if you would like to skip this section there is a tl;dr at the end.
Originally, I had found myself unable to login to the app Snapchat because they had gone to extreme lengths to lock out rooted users (an infamous fact on online discussions).
A popular solution for this would've been to install the Xposed Framework with RootCloak to hide root from Snapchat - this is where my first problem came along.
My Android phone is encrypted.
This means that I could not use TWRP to flash the Xposed Framework zip (because TWRP for my device does not support encryption, thus could not read /data directory.)
I tried using FlashFire to skip recovery and got the same result - /data encrypted.
I tried to flash with CWM to see if it would support decryption of /data partition, but CWM isn't even compatible with my device.
At this point I was running out of things to try (I had been after this problem for about three days) and I decided to just kick the bucket, unroot and factory reset, because apparently the only way to undo data encryption on Android is to delete everything
.
Apparently, even this would be a challenge. To factory reset a rooted device, you apparently need a stock ROM.
I tried looking for stock ROMs for SM-N910U online but the sites that came up (there were about 9 hits on Google for my baseband) all seemed fake and potentially harmful.
Even then, I don't know how I would flash the ROM since my TWRP doesn't work but that's the least of my worries at the moment
.
I'd be extremely grateful if anyone could offer any potential pointers on where to download a safe stock ROM for my device and how to flash this ROM when I have no working TWRP (since my /data partition is, again, encrypted).
It seems a bit like a paradox - to remove data encryption you need a TWRP stock flash, but for a TWRP stock flash you need to remove data encryption.
Please do help... thank you in advance.
TL;DR
Device Details:
What follows is the original story and my attempts to fix it. It's rather long, so if you would like to skip this section there is a tl;dr at the end.
Originally, I had found myself unable to login to the app Snapchat because they had gone to extreme lengths to lock out rooted users (an infamous fact on online discussions).
A popular solution for this would've been to install the Xposed Framework with RootCloak to hide root from Snapchat - this is where my first problem came along.
My Android phone is encrypted.
This means that I could not use TWRP to flash the Xposed Framework zip (because TWRP for my device does not support encryption, thus could not read /data directory.)
I tried using FlashFire to skip recovery and got the same result - /data encrypted.
I tried to flash with CWM to see if it would support decryption of /data partition, but CWM isn't even compatible with my device.
At this point I was running out of things to try (I had been after this problem for about three days) and I decided to just kick the bucket, unroot and factory reset, because apparently the only way to undo data encryption on Android is to delete everything
Apparently, even this would be a challenge. To factory reset a rooted device, you apparently need a stock ROM.
I tried looking for stock ROMs for SM-N910U online but the sites that came up (there were about 9 hits on Google for my baseband) all seemed fake and potentially harmful.
Even then, I don't know how I would flash the ROM since my TWRP doesn't work but that's the least of my worries at the moment
I'd be extremely grateful if anyone could offer any potential pointers on where to download a safe stock ROM for my device and how to flash this ROM when I have no working TWRP (since my /data partition is, again, encrypted).
It seems a bit like a paradox - to remove data encryption you need a TWRP stock flash, but for a TWRP stock flash you need to remove data encryption.
Please do help... thank you in advance.
TL;DR
- tried to install xposed to hide root.
- found out that i can't flash any roms from recovery, because my recovery (twrp) doesn't support android disk encryption.
- found out that to remove encryption, i need to factory reset.
- i can't factory reset, because I need a stock ROM and I don't know where to find said stock ROM.
- also, how would i even flash this rom without a working recovery (again, the recovery doesn't work because full disk encryption).
- found out that i can't flash any roms from recovery, because my recovery (twrp) doesn't support android disk encryption.
- found out that to remove encryption, i need to factory reset.
- i can't factory reset, because I need a stock ROM and I don't know where to find said stock ROM.
- also, how would i even flash this rom without a working recovery (again, the recovery doesn't work because full disk encryption).
Device Details:
Phone: Samsung Galaxy Note 4
Model: SM-N910U
Android version: 6.0.1 Marshmallow
Baseband version: N910UXXU1DPL1
Bootloader: N910UXXU2DPL1
Model: SM-N910U
Android version: 6.0.1 Marshmallow
Baseband version: N910UXXU1DPL1
Bootloader: N910UXXU2DPL1
