[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] TheDrive:
fastboot1.img is an external scondary (primary is a Mask BROM in CPU) boot loader image used just to load it to the RAM and send data to flash Fastboot.img with it.

Fastboot1 is about 120KB long (for Honor 4C). Fastboot1 partition does NOT exist in the phone storage (eMMC), you can't dump it from the phone. Fastboot1.img is included to the original UPDATE.APP and can be extrated as good as other partition images using some 3rd party tool like Huawei Update Extractor.

It is a complicated matter for a while to deal with the latest Huawei SoC's at the lowest level. We should perform much more exploration to learn how to do a thing with these devices. It's clear to me that we should find the way to binary patch some loaders to eliminate 'secure boot' signature 'protection'. Seems to be very complicated job.

Anyone should realize. There is no problem to dump any 'super secret' data from your device at the professional level while you have phisical access to it (e.g. device is siezed or stolen). We will simply blow off the eMMC and read it with a $200 hardware programmer. It's a price of your safety. No one 'secure boot' will some kind prevent to do this job. The only way to hide data from one's eyes is a strong encryption, also assuming no one is able to snif your keys or data itself.

There is no reason to develop any 'secure boots'. If you run unsafe apps in your device - it will not help. (Getting apps from Play is not the mark of safety, trust me, Market is full of offensive spying and ad-forcing apps. Otherwise most devs simply will not earn a pennies) If your device has been stolen - it will not help. If you have been seized by the law enforcement with your device - it will not help!

On other hand you are personally and 'goodwill' devs around the world limited to install and change any low level (i.e. REAL vs virtual) code in your device. Since then you have no ability to remove and eliminate any spying features preinstalled to your device by the menufacturer/developer, including Google and 'Matrix'. This 'technology' is to prevent users to use their devices without control.

For a while they (various manufacturers) do provide you with an 'unlocking code' (this is the result of the many people protests) which however doesn't allow you to change lowest level bootloaders which by the time may incorporate lowest level virtual machine manager and get access to any RAM data at any moment (as it was already done for some server equipement, later done to the all the modern PC's - look for Intel ME BIOS explorations).

Today particularily Huawei forces users to do many strange things to get code. For example you should reg in Huawei site with your personal data, accept their terms, then login every day for a two weeks and check whether you are already obligated to get code or not. It seems to be craziness. What we'll see the next?

And once more, unlocking with a code doesn't allow you to mod bootloaders! Second or third bootloader (depending on the device architecture) does check bootloader lock state in some proprietary eMMC partition (any similar devices perform such way). This means you can't replace bootloader itself nor some configuration settings nor reformat whole eMMC (by your wish or due to the data/hw failure) - bootloader will not find its configuration on the next boot and will lock the device again. (There are some hacking techs like backing up/restoring important partitions and/or sensitive data recreation upon failure, but this is goal of the reversing enthusiasts, not the manufacturer's goodwill.) That's why these Huawei SoC's based devices are still non-repairable for a while.

There should be strong protest in the community against of such a 'technologies'! We are free people as it stated in most of the constitutions of our countries. We should not tolerate Matrix!