One Samsung Galaxy Note 5 owner on T-Mobile had a pleasant surprise upon receiving the Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It was truly unexpected as his device even had a broken IMEI.
Nearly every Android user with a modern device is waiting for the Android 6.0 Marshmallow to roll out, but in most cases there's quite a bit of waiting involved. One lucky user, however, got the update ahead of everybody.
Neither Samsung nor T-Mobile have made any official announcements regarding an imminent update for the Galaxy Note 5, yet XDA user "danon.brown" already got the treat, and the whole scenario is a bit puzzling.
As the XDA user reveals in a series of comments on XDA, his Galaxy Note 5 has a broken IMEI number. The device serves mostly as a Wi-Fi phablet, but on Nov. 15 it started upgrading out of the blue straight to Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Much to his surprise, danon.brown downgraded his Galaxy Note 5 several times to make sure the upadte was the real deal, yet the device kept upgrading right back to Marshmallow. As expected, system dumps and the extracted update itself didn't take long to hit the web and other users grabbed the update files to flash Marshmallow on their own Samsung Galaxy Note 5 on T-Mobile.
Consequently, what started out as an apparently accidental update on one T-Mobile Galaxy Note 5 resulted in several Note 5 devices now rocking Android 6.0 Marshmallow way before its official release. Moreover, with the update and system dump files now out in the open for ROM tweakers to enjoy, a flashable Marshmallow-flavored ROM will most likely become available soon enough for the Galaxy Note 5.
That said, we do not recommend flashing Android 5.0 Marshmallow on the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, as flashing unofficial software comes with a number of risks.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 will receive an official update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow at some point - it just might take a while. As for the T-Mobile version of the phablet, the Uncarrier's official support page for software updates status lists the Galaxy Note 5 update to Marshmallow as still in the "Manufacturer development" stage.
It remains unclear just what exactly happened that caused danon.brown's T-Mobile Galaxy Note 5 to get Marshmallow so soon, on top of the broken IMEI.
