Bought a New Samsung GS5, G-SM900F running Lollipop on Ebay about a year ago naively believing that since it was a "LTE" phone, I would get LTE reception via my carrier AT&T. My bad, 900F doesn't receive the bands AT&T transmits their LTE on. Love the phone otherwise, rooted it via CF-Auto Root and have been running Cyanogen Mod 12.1 nightlies since April. The whole thing is the cat's pajamas for me, except the fact that I can't get LTE when I want/need it.
So I've been saving my shekels and watching Ebay for new in the box G-SM900A for a price I thought was right, and found and ordered one a couple days ago. The idea being I could root it, run CM 12.1, *AND* get my LTE. So in my typical lame fashion, after I ordered the phone I started research on rooting a 900A running Lollipop (which is what this is, G900AUCU4BOF2), and it looks like I have walked right back into something even more odious than the 900F that won't get AT&Ts LTE: an apparently un-rootable phone!
The purpose of my post here is to throw my miserable self out on the good will of this forum, to confirm what I am pretty sure is the bad news; or to tell me I just haven't researched well and someone *has* found a way to defeat AT&Ts locked bootloader. The phone arrived today, still sealed in the box, and I'm pretty sure I can return it still sealed and hopefully find a New Old Stock 900A that has never been upgraded to Lollipop that will give me my LTE, and allow me to root and run Cyanogen Mod on it if my research is accurate.
Thanks in advance,
kingfishbc