How to reinstall the update for Samsung A5. Installing official firmware on Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016). Updating using a computer

Update the software in a timely manner, this will help you ensure the stability of your smartphone and also use new functionality of the programs. In addition, it increases the security and safety of data on your device.

Update via Wi-fi

If possible, use a wi-fi connection - this will avoid installation failures and save mobile traffic.

1. Before updating, check the battery charge (50% or more is required), do not turn off the phone or remove the battery during the update process.
2. Go to the menu "Settings" - "Advanced" - "About device" - "Software update"
3. Select "Update" and wait for the process to complete. Please read notifications carefully; some system updates may delete your data or contacts.

other methods

Automatic update

When new versions of applications are detected, your phone will display a notification. Open the Quick Access Toolbar and confirm to download new components. After the download is complete, select install updates.

Updating using a computer

1. Install the Kies (or Kies3) program to synchronize your PC with your phone.
2. Connect your phone to your computer using a USB cable and launch the program.
3. Select the "Updates" menu item and follow the instructions.

Update in the store

You can also contact a Samsung service center or a company store and use “smart updates”.

To start working on new firmware, you need a special tool - PDK (Platform Development Kit). This tool is created by Google for each new version of Android. Once the PDK is ready, Google sends it to Samsung and other smartphone and tablet manufacturers.

Then Google announces a new Android for users, and Samsung starts working on the firmware. On average, its creation takes 6 months, but the exact release date is unknown.

Samsung can't start working on the firmware until it receives the necessary tools from Google.

You can't get the firmware right away as soon as you hear about it - it needs to be adapted for a specific smartphone or tablet.

Why is the exact release date of the new firmware unknown?

Before answering this question, let's consider what the firmware consists of. The firmware consists of several parts:

Source- a new Android with basic functions, which is created by Google. This part cannot be immediately installed on any smartphone or tablet, because adapting the code to a specific device requires at least drivers.

If we imagine the creation of firmware using the example of building a building, then the source code is the frame of the new structure.

Drivers- help connect Android and the components that make up a smartphone or tablet: processors, memory, buttons, connectors, sensors and other chips. Drivers are written by chip manufacturers - Samsung and companies that produce only certain parts.

If manufacturers do not write a driver for at least one chip for the new firmware, the device will not be able to work normally with it. If the manufacturer of the mobile network communication chip does not write a driver, the smartphone will not be able to make calls. If the camera manufacturer does not write a driver, the smartphone will not take photographs. The firmware will not be released until all manufacturers write working drivers. Creating drivers takes 2 - 4 months.

Drivers are the cement for connecting the frame (Android) and the foundation (components), without it the building will collapse.

Device manufacturer services- are responsible for the appearance of the desktop, menu items, programs, unique applications and functions. Without them, all tablets and smartphones would look the same and have the same set of functions. This part of the code is written by Samsung.

Services are finishing materials: facing bricks, wallpaper, tiles, paint, parquet.

After all the parts are ready, Samsung's task is to combine them and make them workable. At this stage, the firmware is thoroughly tested to find and eliminate all errors. The total number of tests is several thousand times.

The final firmware must be approved by Google - it’s like accepting a building by a state commission. If she doesn't like something, the process continues until the desired option appears.

Nobody gives the exact date of the firmware appearance, because: a) several companies are working on it; b) the process lasts until complete adaptation and elimination of errors.

For which smartphones and tablets will the firmware be released?

New firmware is released for flagship devices within 18 months from the moment they go on sale.

Flagship devices are smartphones and tablets of the Galaxy S, Galaxy Tab S, Galaxy Note series, and some mid-segment models.

New firmware is not released for all devices.

Over time, firmware for a certain device is no longer released.

Below is a preliminary list of models that will receive updates to Android 9 (Pie), with approximate dates. Model list and release dates are subject to change.

Already received the update:

How to find out that new firmware has been released

If new firmware is available for your smartphone or tablet, a notification will appear at the top of the display.

A similar notification will appear if you connect the device to your computer and run the program Smart Switch.

If there is no notification, then: a) the firmware has not yet been released; b) there is something wrong with the device (the current firmware is installed incorrectly or modified, the device is not for sale in Russia). In the first case - wait, in the second - contact service center.

Where to download new firmware

Samsung does not publicly release firmware. New firmware is installed through the device menu or program Smart Switch.

The firmware cannot be downloaded from the Samsung website.

How to update firmware

We have made detailed instructions in a separate article.

How to return to the previous firmware

Officially, without loss of warranty - no way. Therefore, we recommend that you make an informed decision before upgrading.

Changes in the new firmware

Not all changes that are in the source code will necessarily appear in the new firmware. A detailed list of changes appears before downloading each new firmware.

Changes that can be made.

02.06.2017

Preface

Hi all. So, I finally decided to review one of the new products from Samsung - Galaxy A5 2017. What prompted me to buy this particular smartphone? After all, I have a wonderful one that works great! Yes, it’s good in everything: the screen, the power, and everything that’s possible. But there is one "but". And this “but”, in fact, covers up the numerous advantages of this 2013 flagship. Battery. Which constantly swells, as if there is nothing to do. I’ve already changed a bunch of batteries on this flagship, and they all lasted no more than six months, both the originals and their Chinese counterparts.

And so, at the end of 2016, I saw announcements of the updated A-series line on the website, and the middle device, number 5, attracted me both with its characteristics and appearance. Although the price, of course, was steep at that time. So, having read the few reviews on it that were just beginning to appear, I already knew for sure that as soon as it went on sale, I would buy it! And I bought it!

Criterias of choice

The camera has always been important to me in smartphones. Although it is clear that for high-quality shots it is better to have a DSLR, it is still nice to have both a phone and a high-quality camera in a single bottle. And if this bottle is also beautiful, then that’s even better. And he’s beautiful, you can’t argue with that! Well, for me at least.

Battery. What was important was not the capacity, but how economically the charge was consumed. And according to reviews, this smartphone holds its charge well.

Multi-SIM and MICRO-essentiality. And preferably, all together, which is rare even for flagships.

Protection against water and dust, well, that is, IP68 standard. I've never had a secure phone before...

Appearance

And what I also like is the high-quality assembly. And although I used to be constantly confused by the peculiarity of some smartphones with non-removable batteries, I must admit that such smartphones really feel monolithic. Well, although it was also distinguished by good build quality, it is very superior to it in this parameter.

Plus, the speaker here is located not on the back of the smartphone, but on the side. This is very cool, because when you play on a smartphone, you won’t be able to cover the speaker with your hand. And when it lies on the table, the sound, again, will not overlap. In my opinion, this is the best location. Although it doesn't match the sound quality. Yes, it’s loud, and there’s a hint of bass. But, probably, its not the best sound is due to its protection from water.

The buttons are made quite in the spirit of Samsung, clearly and minimalistically. They press clearly and do not hang out in their usual holes. Just like the Home button, which I’m used to in , is also present and does its job properly, also serving as a fingerprint scanner. But more on that later.

The camera and flash are located on the back of the smartphone. The camera does not protrude from the body, and there is no fear of scratching the peephole. The flash doesn't stand out either.

Screen. Display

The more, the better, I think. And that’s why I didn’t take a smartphone with a diagonal of less than five inches. And I took a smartphone with a diagonal of 5.2 inches. And the resolution is not lower than Full HD. Because I already see less grain on the display. And 2K is like that in general. Okay, this is all chatter, because it’s not the resolution that decides, but the number of ppi. Right? Just having read about the A3 2017, whose HD resolution is too grainy, I refused to buy it in favor of the A5 2017, which is fine with this matter. And my favorite AMOLED with acidic colors is in place, everything I love. Of course, you can also turn off this acidity in the display settings, but I didn’t. It may not look natural, but it’s cute.

No grain is visible. The viewing angles are the widest. But when you deviate to the sides, you can still see that the colors are not exactly inverted, but a small proportion of green, very small, is present. And this is such a feature of this model. Interestingly, this has not been observed, and there is a several-year difference between these smartphones. But let's not forget that this was a flagship, and this is a middling one...

As for the tactile sensation, everything is fine here. The fourth generation Gorilla Glass makes its presence felt. I don’t know about the strength, I haven’t tested it and don’t intend to, but my finger glides over this “monkey” like butter. As for the oleophobic coating, it seems to be there, but it’s not particularly effective. But what I want is that if you use any smartphone and move your finger over it, then traces of them will remain in any way. They also appear and more or less disappear, no discomfort is felt.

I read an interesting fact on one site about oleophobia - they say that these new smart phones have some kind of defect - in some places of the display it quickly wears off, and the traces of this are too visible. I don’t know what it looks like in real life, I rubbed it, rubbed it, dirty it, dirty it, wiped it - but I didn’t notice such a defect, or it doesn’t look bright on my device. It doesn't matter, because I immediately put tempered glass on the screen to prevent scratches. After all, no matter how they assured that Gorilla Glass protects against scratches, I did not manage to get a scratch... True, this glass does not completely cover the display, because the A5 2017 now has the newfangled 2.5D.

I have always been dissatisfied with the fact that Samsung's Tachwiz shell is slow, overloaded, even though it looks beautiful. And it was strange for me to see how everything was done slower on the flagship than on inexpensive Chinese smartphones with pure Android. Now I’ll say something else - the shell has changed its name and began to look much better - and... most importantly, it just flies.

It really flies, I'm not kidding. Everything opens quickly, be it the gallery, the dialer, or the camera. I don’t notice any lags or slowdowns, surprisingly.

The version here is Android 6, a kind of marmalade.

Over-the-air updates are supported, and I constantly turn it on in order to detect the “nougat,” that is, the seventh version that Samsung promises in the spring. Summer is coming, and there is no new version. I would really like to. Look, mid-range or even basic models from LG come out with seven, but what do we have? Still a six. How is that?

In general, the design of the new shell from Samsung is different not only visually, but practically, the settings menu has been slightly changed, there is even support for things that I was incredibly happy about, so I won’t risk installing custom firmware, so as not to get a “brick”. And here you can change Android externally in such a way that you don’t need any firmware - you just need to go to the Samsung brand store and register, download the necessary themes, and even separately the icons you want. Which is, in fact, what I did.

There is also a blue light filter that reduces eye strain by limiting the amount of blue light. In fact, the screen is simply made dimmer and more yellowish.

I have never used a device with such a screen parameter.

By the way, there is no LED here that signals missed calls, messages, turns on the screen and shows a screensaver with a clock if you hold your palm over the LED. At first I suffered from this, then I got used to it, especially since instead of an LED there is one feature that was previously available only to the latest generation flagships - this is the Always On Display, which, thanks to AMOLED technology, constantly displays the clock and notifications on the screensaver, or you can set calendar. And this function does not consume much battery power.

In the “Optimization” item, the parameters of the battery, memory and RAM are conveniently located. Everything is convenient and clear.

This smartphone also supports NFC for payment. Everything is standard.

A fingerprint scanner, as I already said, is present, and I didn’t understand this feature before. But having experienced it myself, I realized that the fingerprint scanner is a convenient thing. First of all, because of the protection. Because no one outsider, whose fingerprint is not included, so to speak, in the database, will be able to unlock the smartphone and thereby view its internal contents. The speed of the scanner is not satisfactory, everything is fast enough, you just have to put your finger on the Home button and the screen immediately unlocks. Even in some narrowly targeted applications, such as banking, this method of logging into your personal account also works. Very comfortably. And I’m so used to unlocking a smartphone using a scanner that when I pick up another Samsung device, I automatically try to unlock it in the same way!

Otherwise, the shell over pure Android is quite wow, convenient to use. Otherwise, this is a familiar “robot”.

Performance. "Power", RAM

It's time to say a little about the hardware. Inside, the new smartphone is powered by a processor of Samsung's own design - Exynos 7 Octa 7880. If you need dry numbers, here are 8 Cortex-A53 cores up to 1.88 GHz, Mali-T830 MP3 950 MHz. Now, according to personal feelings: if the flagship one seemed to be fast, although the shell was heavy, then everything here is an order of magnitude higher and faster. All operations are performed with lightning speed, programs open quickly, and it’s a pleasure to use. I understand that now there will be those who will say that even last year’s flagships will be faster and more powerful than . Perhaps this is so, because neither, nor, and even more so, I didn’t use it, because I used the old one, and I directly compare it with the brand new A5 2017, and for me it is much faster than my previous device. Judging by the test in AnTuTu, it is clear that this is a real average and scores “only” 60078 points.

Yes, this is not much, but for me, who saw the figure on the 2013 flagship of 28,000 points, this is a monster in the good sense of the word ☺.

As for heating under load, this was a pleasant surprise for me in the sense that no matter how hard I tried to load the smartphone in order to generate heat from all sides, I was unable to do this. Even when scrolling through desktops, the screen was already becoming noticeably warm, and if you spent a little time surfing the Internet, the screen was already heating up quite a bit. As soon as you went into a toy, even an undemanding one like Angry Birds, the heating was felt even more strongly. And if you took photos or recorded videos, it was simply painful to hold the smartphone in your hand, because the heating was felt both in front and behind.

Vladimir Nesterov

Many novice smartphone users, when they hear the word “firmware” for the first time, do not understand what we are talking about, why it is needed in general.

This is why you can so often see questions asked on forums: “What is firmware and how to flash a Samsung Galaxy A5?”

In this article you will find out why this is necessary, and also receive detailed instructions for flashing the Samsung Galaxy A5 firmware.

The term "firmware": meaning

A smartphone, like any modern computer, runs an operating system (Android, Linux, Windows or another).

She is completely responsible for the operation of the device, in other words, being its “brain”. “consciousness”, which is controlled by the computer.

Without an operating system, smartphones, tablets, and computers remain simply sets of dead hardware. Everything is simple with a computer, we install an operating system on it.

In smartphones, the operating system is located in the internal memory, and it is the installation procedure that is called “firmware”.

That is, the system is recorded on the internal, permanent memory of the phone. If you compare the procedure with a computer, this roughly means that you are reinstalling Windows on it.

Now let's move on to the main question - how to reflash the Samsung A5.
Instructions

1. To install new firmware on the Samsung Galaxy A5 2016, download the following files to your computer: the Odin flashing program, the official firmware for the Samsung Galaxy A510FXXU1APAE (UA) and the SAMSUNG USB Driver.
2. Unpack the archive with the driver and install it.
3. Then do the same with the flashing program and the official firmware.
4. Run the firmware program, doing it as an administrator. To do this, hover over Odin and right-click “run as administrator.” Then confirm “yes”.
5. The firmware files must be placed in this order: File BL...tar.md5 is inserted into the “BL” field, file AP...tar.md5 – into the “AP” field, file CP...tar.md5 file – into the “CP” field, file CSC …tar.md5 – in the “CSC” field.
6. Make sure the checkboxes are located in “F. Reset Time" and in "Auto Reboot".
7. Put the device into firmware mode. To do this, you need to turn on the smartphone, press and then hold the following buttons: “power”, “home”, “volume down”.
8. After this, a menu will open. Press "volume up".
9. You connect your smartphone to your computer using the included USB cable, and “COM” appears in the Odin program.
10. Click "Start".
11. The smartphone firmware process has started.

Peculiarities

If for some reason your computer cannot recognize your phone, try reinstalling the driver or try a different USB port.

After flashing the firmware, the smartphone reboots automatically. The corresponding “Finish” message appears in the Odin program.

To get root (root rights), you will need to go to the settings of the Galaxy A5 (2016) and enable developer mode: settings / about the device / software information.

Click the “build number” line seven times. We activate “OEM unlocking” and “usb debugging” in the settings (it is important not to skip this point, otherwise the stock firmware will have to be restored again). Download the “cf_autoroot_sm-a510f_ported.zip” archive and place it in the root of drive C on your PC.

Run the flashing program and flash the archive “cf_autoroot_sm-a510f_ported.tar.md5” archive. The smartphone will restart automatically.

If you have any difficulties or were unable to flash the Samsung Galaxy A5 yourself, contact the service center. Good luck to all!

Instructions for installing the official single-file firmware on the Samsung Galaxy A5 2016 (SM-A510x).

Drivers and programs

Attention!

To install the official stock firmware on the Galaxy A5 (2016) and return the phone status (Settings > About device > Properties > Device status) to “Official” after upgrading from custom firmware and thereby returning the ability to receive updates By air, just follow the instructions provided.

Installation instructions

Unpack the downloaded archive into a folder with Odin PC for convenience. The file in the ".tar" or ".tar.md5" format must be left, but the "SS_DL.dll" can be deleted.

Reset your device.
To do this, go to the settings section " Backup and factory reset", select the item " Reset data» > « Reset the device", enter the PIN code (if one is set) and click on the button " Delete everything" The phone will reboot.

Run Odin PC as administrator.

Put your device into download mode ( Download Mode).
To do this, you need to simultaneously hold down the Volume Down key, the Home button and the Power button. Then wait until the phone reboots and agree to the warning by pressing the Volume Up key.

In this state, connect the smartphone to the computer. In Odin the message “ COM».

Click on the “ AP» and select the firmware TAR archive.

Items " Auto Reboot" And " F.Reset Time" must be activated, A " Re-Partition"if active - must be disabled.

Click on the “ Start" The firmware installation process will begin.

At the end of the operation, if everything was successful, the message “All threads completed. (succeed 1 / failed 0)". The phone must be restarted manually by holding down the power button until the screen turns off. It may take up to 5 minutes for your device to boot up initially.
ATTENTION!
If the device does not boot for a long time or the data has not been reset, it must be performed from recovery.
To do this, you need to simultaneously hold down the Volume Up key, the Home button and the Power button. After downloading, select " Wipe data/Factory reset", and then - " Reboot system now" If after these steps the device also freezes when loading, you need to reflash it again.