How to remove Chinese from Galaxy A9 Pro A9100

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Chinese Galaxy A9 Pro has the model number A9100. If you manage to get your hands on this device while you are not a Chinese citizen, you will highly unlike what you will see on the screen. The phone is all Chinese. It has the Chinese language set on it. It has Chinese bloatware on it and you will find that junk everywhere in the phone. The very first thing you would want to do this phone is to change the language, but you will realise this within no time that there is no such option to change language on the phone.

This situation leaves you with no choice but to customise the phone and get rid of that junk. A custom recovery for the Galaxy A9 Pro A9100 was released a few months ago. The phone was rooted as well. This made it possible to flash differnet files on the phone and tweak it. Right now, you can kick out all the Chinese junk from the phone and debrand it to make it a normal phone by following a little procedure.

Galaxy A9 A9100 users can flash a latest stock ROM on the phone. After flashing the ROM, you can flash the TWRP recovery file, SuperSU.zip and no-verity files. Once you are all set, you can flash a CSC file for your region or for your city. After flashing the CSC file, you have to flash the relevant GPS.conf file on the phone and that’s it. You will have the phone unbranded and you will be able to set English language or any other language depending on your liking.

The entire process has been broken down into few simple steps below. You can follow these steps now to remove Chinese from your Galaxy A9 Pro A9100.

Important things to keep in mind

  • This tutorial will only work for the Galaxy A9 Pro Chinese variant SM-A9100.
  • Charge your phone up to 50% to avoid power issues during the process.
  • Backup everything on your phone as the process involves going through a data wipe.
  • Use OEM data cable to connect your phone to your PC.
  • Galaxy A9 Pro SM-A9100 owners need to unlock the bootloader of their device first.
  • Disable reactivation lock and find my mobile as well using settings > security.
  • Enable OEM Unlocking and USB debugging mode on your phone.
  • Get a micro SD card or a USB OTG as we will need to copy some files to it.

Remove Chinese from Galaxy A9 Pro A9100

  1. Download and install Samsung USB drivers on your computer.
  2. Download and extract Odin 3.11.1 on your computer’s desktop.
  3. Download the recommended firmware for your Galaxy A9 A9100.
  4. Unzip the downlaoded firmware to get the .tar or .md5.tar file.
  1. Open Odin3.exe now.
  2. The only option ticked in Odin should be F.Reset.Time. Untick all other options.
  3. In Odin, click the AP tab and select the firmware.tar file that you got upon extracting the firmware.zip file.
  4. Odin will now take a few minutes to load the firmware. Let it complete the process.
  5. Now put your phone in download mode. Turn it off first. Turn it on now by pressing and holding Volume Down + Home + Power Key. As it boots up and shows a warning, press Volume Up to continue.
  6. Connect your phone to your PC now while Odin is open.
  7. The ID:COM box in Odin should turn blue and it should show Added status in the logs.
  8. Now click the Start button in Odin and let it flash the firmware. Do not reboot your device. Just disconnect it from the PC.

Flashing TWRP, SuperSU, CSC and GPS.conf to remove Chinese now

  1. Download TWRP Recovery for Galaxy A9 Pro A9100: twrp_3.0.2-1_sm-a910_a9100_7217
  2. Download SuperSU.zip and DM-Verity file and all other files, copy these files to an external SD card or a USB OTG.
    1. SR3-SuperSU-v2.79-SR3-20170114223742.zip
    2. no-verity-no-encrypt_ashyx
    3. CSCSelection_N7_V1.1.5.zip
    4. GPS.conf file.zip according to your region.
  1. Open Odin3.exe file from the extracted Odin files that you downloaded above.
  2. Put your Galaxy A9 Pro in download mode now. To do so, turn off your phone first. Now turn it on by pressing and holding Volume Down + Power + Home button. As soon as your device boots up showing a Downloading screen, leave the keys.
  3. Connect your phone to your PC now. Odin should show an “Added” message in the logs and also show the blue light in the ID:COM box. This will verify a successful connection between your phone and your PC.
  4. Now click on the “AP” tab in Odin and select the TWRP Recovery.img.tar file according to your device carefully.
  5. The options ticked in Odin should be only “F.Reset Time“. Make sure that the Auto-Reboot option is not checked, we do not want to reboot the phone after flashing TWRP recovery.
  6. After selecting the file and checking/unchecking the options carefully, hit the start button. Odin will now flash the TWRP and show you a PASS message in a few minutes.
  7. Once done, disconnect your device from your PC now. Do not reboot your device.
  8. Now you need to boot directly into TWRP Recovery. Turn off your phone completely and turn it on by pressing and holding Volume Up + Home + Power key now. Your phone should successfully boot into newly installed custom recovery.
  9. TWRP will ask you whether you want to allow modifications or not, you will need to swipe finger to the right to enable modifications. Swiping the finger to right will trigger dm-verity, if you will need to disable it immediately. Leaving it enabled will not let you boot the phone neither root it. This is an important stuff since we want to be able to modify the system.
  10. Now tap “Wipe > Format Data > type “yes” to format data. This is important to disable encryption. This step will factory reset your phone, so make sure that you’ve backed up the entire data at hand.
  11. Now make sure that you’ve copied the SuperSU.zip and dm-verity.zip files in external SD Card or USB OTG, if not then transfer both these files to your external SD Card by using MTP mode in TWRP now.
  12. Once you’ve the files, tap “Install > Install Zip > locate the SuperSU.zip according to the location where you copied > flash it”.
  13. Now once again tap “Install > Install Zip > locate the dm-verity.zip file > select it > swipe to flash”.
  14. Get back to main menu in TWRP recovery, tap Install > Install Zip > Locate CSC.zip file > select it > swipe to flash.
  15. After flashing CSC file, go to the main menu in TWRP for the last time, tap  Install > Install Zip > Locate GPS.conf file > select it > swipe to flash.
  16. Once done flashing, reboot your phone to system.

Conclusion

Now that your phone has been debranded, you can reboot it properly. As your phone boots up, you will find out that the Chinese language and Chinese bloatware is gone. You can now set English or any other language as your default language. Moreover, your phone will have Google Play Store pre-isntalled now. No more flashing and tweaking required now. Hopefully this solution worked for all of you. In casey you are stuck with something, reach me out through the comment box below.

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Usama is a software engineer by profession and at TechBeasts.com he uses his expertise to solve everyday consumer tech problems with his main areas of interest being Android, iOS and Windows.

11 COMMENTS

  1. Hey, first-off thanks for such a detailed step by step post.

    I followed all the steps diligently, but I seem to have been stuck on the last one. My Samsung SM 9100 is not coming out of the TWRP recovery mode – the “reboot to system” is starting the recovery mode again, so I’m stuck in a loop.

    Please help.

    • @disqus_V9iMev7bhR:disqus You’re probably downloading some invalid file. The firmware filed linked above is proper and of full size.

  2. i tried much to download gps conf file but it doesn`t available in the link u given
    it brings me to dropbox and says file not available….what should i do

  3. Greetings! I have 2 questions for now. First, the link in the “recommended firmware” has a version of APF1. At the time of posting the latest version is AQB3. The question is, is it okay for me to flash the latest rom instead of the outdated one? Second, is it possible for you to upload the GPS.conf file? Because the download links on the link given are dead or have been removed. Thank you.

    • I did everything above step by step (used APF1) though I faced an error on flashing the GPS.conf file. at the end unlike what you stated in the conclusion I didn’t have Google Play Store. What should I do?

  4. I have completed the while process twice but unable to remover Chinese nor been able to add google apps. Any other procedure to remove Chinese from A9 pro and make it normal international version phone?

Got a question/query or a suggestion? Drop it below.