After many months of waiting, Samsung has finally released the Android Oreo update for the Galaxy Note 8. This build has not been officially pushed by Samsung, but was released onto the AT&T servers. It has been officially certified by Google and passed SafteyNet compatibility, which means apps like Google Pay will now work.

 

This update is for the Snapdragon version of the Galaxy Note 8. It's the first that has been certified in the Play Store and passes SafetyNet. This build is also an update on top of all the new features that come with Android Oreo, such as picture-in-picture mode, notification channels, notification snoozing, background app optimizations, and more. There are also plenty of Samsung-specific changes with Samsung Experience 9.0. The March security patch is included in the update as well.

 

This build is likely to be pushed out by carriers very soon. If you don’t want to wait for carriers to release the update, you can follow the instructions below to install manually.

How to Update Galaxy Note 8 to Android Oreo:

  1. Check your phone's model number to see if its N950U or N950U1. If your model number is N950U1 you will have carrier apps and boot animation when using your phone.
  2. You will need to download BRA8 Odin and the update.zip
  3. Copy the OTA file onto the SD Card on your phone. If you don’t have an SD Card, you can skip this step but you will still need the OTA file on your computer.
  4. Extract the Odin firmware linked earlier. It will be in a zip format.
  5. Reboot your device into download mode by powering off your device then holding the Bixby button + Volume down + power
  6. Download the Odin tool and plug in your phone to your computer. Odin is an official tool from Samsung that can flash official Samsung firmware onto Samsung Galaxy devices. In Odin on the right side, you will see 5 sections, but only 3 of those will be used.
  7. Click the BL button and navigate to your Odin firmware folder where you extracted your files, and then click the file starting with BL. Do the same for AP and CP.
    8. Click start at the bottom of Odin.9. Wait for your device to flash and then reboot. As soon as it reboots, power off your phone again. Then, boot into recovery once more by holding down the Bixby button + Volume up + power.10. If you have an SD card, select “apply update from SD card.” You can select this by using your volume rockers to navigate and the power button to select. After selecting the option, find the file called "update.zip" and select it with the power button.11. If you don’t have an SD card, select “apply update from ADB." On your computer, open a command prompt by pressing Windows key + R and typing "cmd." Once this command prompt opens up, type "adb sideload" and press enter. If you don't already have ADB set up, you can follow these quick set of instructions to get up to speed.