Odin is a utility software program developed and used by

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

internally which is used to communicate with Samsung devices in Odin mode (also called download mode). It can be used to

flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

a custom recovery firmware image (as opposed to the stock recovery firmware image) to a Samsung Android device. Odin is also used for unbricking certain Android devices. Odin is the Samsung proprietary alternative to

Fastboot Fastboot is a protocol and a tool of the same name. It is included with the Android SDK package used primarily to modify the flash filesystem In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure t ...

. There is no account of Samsung ever having officially openly released Odin, though it is mentioned in the developer documents for

Samsung Knox Samsung Knox is a proprietary security and management framework pre-installed on most Samsung mobile devices. Its primary purpose is to provide organizations with a toolset for managing work devices, such as employee mobile phones or interactiv ...

SDK and some documents even instruct users to use Odin. Some other docs on Knox SDK reference "engineering firmware", which presumably can be a part of the Knox SDK along with Odin. Publicly available binaries are believed to be the result of leaks. The tool is not intended for consumers, but for Samsung's own personnel and approved repair centers.

Usage

Although none of the publicly available downloads are authorized by Samsung itself, XDA-Developers consider the files offered on their Forum
Patched Odin 3.13.1
the safest option. For the usage of Odin, the phone needs to be in Odin mode. For this, some key combination need to be pressed, such as Power + Volume Down + Home.

Alternatives

Heimdall is a free/libre/open-source,

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

replacement for Odin which is based on libusb. The name

Heimdall In Norse mythology, Heimdall (from Old Norse Heimdallr) is a god who keeps watch for invaders and the onset of Ragnarök from his dwelling Himinbjörg, where the burning rainbow bridge Bifröst meets the sky. He is attested as possessing for ...

, like Odin, is an allusion to

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern peri ...

; both Odin and Heimdall are among the deities of the Norse pantheon.

References

{{Firmware and booting Android (operating system) software Proprietary software Samsung software Windows software