The Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup represents the best of all technologies that Samsung can provide to its consumers. If you are in the market right now for a premium smartphone, the Galaxy S10 and its siblings will figure in your list as probable purchase options. Now you would be glad to know that XDA Recognized Developer topjohnwu has managed to achieve root on the Exynos-based Samsung Galaxy S10, S10+ and S10e and has released an installation guide that utilizes a Canary release of Magisk.
Before we get started, it is important to know that although topjohnwu has done his best in making the procedure as user-friendly as possible, there is still a large learning curve involved. As such, if you have never rooted a device before, or if you have difficulties following instructions in the order mentioned, then I would not recommend that you attempt this on your brand new S10. There are a lot of smaller complexities involved in the process which, if you mess up, will brick your device. The developer has created a separate installation guide for these new Samsung devices that have launched with Android Pie, i.e. the Galaxy S10/S10+/S10e and Galaxy A50 specifically. Other devices in the Galaxy A-series have also launched with Android Pie -- we do not know yet if the instruction set differs for them.
Installing Magisk in order to root the S10 will trip Knox, which is expected. You also need an unlocked bootloader (which in turn initiates a data wipe), and installing magisk for the first time also requires a full data wipe. Unlocking the bootloader on these new Samsung devices is also a different process, as Samsung has introduced a "VaultKeeper" service which attempts to "relock" the bootloader after the data is wiped. After you have "unlocked the bootloader", you have to boot the device, go through the initial setup (you can skip several steps as you will be wiping again anyway), and check again if the bootloader unlocking option exists.
Installing Magisk involves downloading the firmware of your device, extracting its AP tar file and patching it with Magisk on your phone, and then flashing the patched tar file as AP in Odin on your computer. There are more details that you need to keep in mind and follow, so the complete instruction set is purposefully omitted from the scope of this article. Please read the installation instructions from the developer in its entirety to know more.
There are also technicalities involved after you have installed Magisk. To boot to a system with Magisk installed, you will have to boot to recovery every time. And since the recovery also exists in the same partition as Magisk does, the phone decides which way to boot on the basis of how long you press volume up. Topjohnwu has summarized this post-Magisk scenario as follows:
- (Powering up normally) → (System with no Magisk)
- (Power + Bixby + Volume Up) → (Bootloader warning) → (Release all buttons) → (System with Magisk)
- (Power + Bixby + Volume Up) → (Bootloader warning) → (Keep holding volume up) → (Actual recovery)
As regards upgrading Magisk, you can directly upgrade Magisk within Magisk Manager. But for upgrading your device, you cannot flash the stock AP tar file and you would need to pre-patch the firmware before flashing in Odin.
If you are looking for more technical details on the process, the developer has created a separate thread.
This new Magisk Canary release also adds support for Android Q Beta 2.