Install Custom Recovery and Root Exynos Galaxy S7 & S7 Edge

Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are two of the most stunning smartphones till date. These pure beasts equip might specifications packed inside a cool build and design. Both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge come with a QHD Super AMOLED display. The Galaxy S7 Edge variant has a curve going at both sides of the screen and the display is slightly larger than the Galaxy S7. Both these smartphones are equipped by either Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 or the Exynos 8890 CPU accompanied by Adreno 530 and Mali-T880 MP12 GPU respectively. Both these smartphones have a RAM of 4 GB and the internal storage starts from 32 GB. There is a microSD card slot as well. Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge carry a 12 MP stunning shooter at the back and a 5 MP on the front for selfies. Both these phones can be found running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box.

Owning a beast like Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge and having it not rooted means you’re missing out something. The true potential of an Android smartphone lies within the root access. If you’re an Android power user, it would be more easy for you to understand. However, if you’re not an Android power user, you may want to educate yourself that root access allows you to modify the behavior of your Android phone. It allows you to customize the performance, battery consumption and the GUI of your phone.

You can also add some new features by means of some root specific applications. Another term that’s much similar to the root access is the custom recovery, which gives you extra control of your phone. With a custom recovery installed at hand, you can back up the whole Android system, flash zip files, wipe your selected partitions and a lot more. Both the root access and custom recovery for the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are available now. In the following guide, we will learn how to flash the latest custom recovery (TWRP) and root the Exynos variants of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

Install Custom Recovery and Root Exynos Galaxy S7 & S7 Edge

This guide is bound to work with the following variants of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge.

Early preparations

1. Charge your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge up to 50% to avoid power issues during the flashing process. Check your device’s model number carefully under settings > more / general > about device.
2. Enable OEM Unlocking and also enable USB debugging mode on your phone.
3. Get a microSD card as you will need to copy SuperSU.zip file to that, otherwise you will have to use the MTP mode while you boot up into TWRP recovery to flash copy it.
4. Backup your important contacts, call logs, sms messages and also copy your media content to your computer as you will have to wipe your phone on the way.
5. Uninstall/disable Samsung Kies while using Odin. Samsung Kies can hinder the connection between your phone and Odin.
6. Use OEM data cable to establish connection between your PC and your phone.
7. Follow these instructions to the letter to avoid any mishap during flashing process.

Downloads and installations

• Download and install Samsung USB drivers on your PC: Download Link with Guide
• Download and extract Odin 3.10.7 on your PC: Download Link with Guide
• Now, download the TWRP Recovery.tar file carefully according to your device.
  • TWRP Recovery for Galaxy S7 SM-G930F/FD/X/W8: Download
  • TWRP Recovery for Galaxy S7 SM-G930S/K/L: Download
  • The TWRP Recovery for Galaxy S7 SM-G935F/FD/X/W8: Download
  • TWRP Recovery for Galaxy S7 SM-G935S/K/L: Download
• Download SuperSU.zip file and copy it to your phone’s external SD card. If you haven’t got an external SD card, you will need to copy it to internal storage after installing TWRP recovery.
• Download dm-verity.zip file and copy it to the extern SD card as well. Alternatively, you can also copy both these.zip files to a USB OTG if you have got one.

How to Install TWRP Custom Recovery and Root Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge now

1. Open Odin3.exe file from the extracted Odin files that you downloaded above.
2. Put your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge 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.
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 the 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 let you boot the phone neither root it. This is 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. Go back to the main menu in TWRP Recovery and tap “Reboot > Recovery”. This will once again reboot your phone in TWRP.
12. 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. Once you have the files, tap “Install > locate the SuperSU.zip according to the location where you copied > flash it”.
13. Now once again tap “Install > locate the dm-verity.zip file > flash it”.
14. Once done flashing, reboot your phone to the system.
15. That’s all. You’re rooted and have TWRP recovery installed. Best of luck.

That was it guys. Don’t forget to backup your EFS partition now and also create a Nandroid backup. Its’ time to unleash the true power of your Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. I hope that this guide proved to be fruitful for all of you. Let us know if you are stuck with something or something isn’t working right for you.

Credits: jcaduono