In this guide, we will show you the steps to flash the IMG files on your Samsung device. The devices from the South Korean giant have taken a completely different route in the custom development. Whether it’s the firmware file types [the AP, BL, CP, CSC, and Home CSC instead of the usual partition files in the IMG and BIN formats], Download Mode instead of the Fastboot Mode, or using a third-party tool [Odin] for flashing instead of Fastboot Commands, it has stepped into uncharrtered territory right since day 1.
Therefore, it might become quite a challenging task for a relatively new comer to handle these situations [trust me, this is coming from a personal experience]. Even when I purchased my first Samsung device, I was quite surprised to find that the ROM developers have provided the partition files in the IMG files. So what’s surprising in that?
Well, I knew beforehand that Samsung does not support IMG flashing, so either I had to doubt my knowledge or the developers, both of which I wasn’t planning to do. So what actually did I do and more importantly, how did I manage to flash these IMG files on my Samsung device, if it was indeed possible? Let’s find out.
How to Flash IMG Files in Samsung
First and foremost, you cannot flash IMG files on your Samsung device, neither from Fastboot nor from Download Mode. So this means I had the right knowledge about this domain. But then, why did the developers provide their files in this format? Was there a mistake on their end? No, they were right on their part as well. They had only done half the job, you’ll have to join the rest of the dots.
In other words, manually convert those IMG files to TAR and then flash it to your device in the Download Mode using the Odin Tool. Here’s how it can be carried out. Before starting, please take a complete device backup. Droidwin and its members wouldn’t be held responsible in case of a thermonuclear war, your alarm doesn’t wake you up, or if anything happens to your device and data by performing the below steps.
- Download and extract Android SDK Platform Tools on your PC.
- Then transfer the desired IMG files to the platform-tools folder.
- Next up, open the Command Prompt window inside this folder.
- Once done, use the below command syntax to TAR the IMG file:
tar --format=ustar -cvf filename.tar filename.img
- For example, use the below commands to TAR the recovery and vbmeta.img:
tar --format=ustar -cvf recovery.tar recovery.img tar --format=ustar -cvf vbmeta.tar vbmeta.img
- Once done, You will get the output TAR files inside the platform-tools folder.
- You may now boot your device to Download Mode and flash the files via Odin.
- Make sure you use the right slot of Odin [recovery -> AP, vbmeta -> userdata].
That’s it. These were the steps to flash IMG files in Samsung. If you have any queries concerning the aforementioned steps, do let us know in the comments. We will get back to you with a solution as soon as possible.
