[General Questions and Answers] smb282:
Little bit of background first...

Finally got my parents (senior citizens) into the smartphone era after StraightTalk starting doing BYOP and I'd had good service so far, but rather than use his old HTC phone which badly needed replacing, he opted to buy the Huawei Sensa (H710VL) branded by TRACFONE and with service via StraightTalk. Fast forward several months, and the old man has discovered a deal for senior citizens from T-Mobile that he likes better, and has opted to switch carriers. Well, he tried to do BYOP with TMOUS and just continue using the H710VL which he likes, but was informed that they wouldn't unlock the phone for another month because they won't do so until you've had it for a year. So therein came my opportunity to promise something I apparently cannot deliver (I told him I'd take the phone home and unlock it for him)!) He (wisely) decided not to wait for me, and went ahead and bought a new phone from TMOUS so he could initiate his new service with them without delay. But I still want to unlock this phone for him, if at all possible!

Fast-forward a few more days--well, I've been screwing around with this phone in the evenings for the past three days, trying to get the bootloader unlocked, and I'm at an impasse. First I had to tangle with the Google account verification, which wouldn't let me even sign into the phone after boot and get to the home screen because I had done a hard reset of the phone first, and didn't have the old man's Google account and password with which to sign back in. Fortunately, intrepid folks who came before me already found a way around that first hurdle. I took the following steps:

1. Went thru HWStartupGuide process until I was able to connect to my home WiFi network. So, internet connection is established.

2. Backed out of there to get to the first setup screen after the TRACFONE splash screen on boot, and used the "emergency calls only" escape hatch to navigate to the stock dialer app.

3. In stock dialer app, entered (without the quotation marks) "*#*#6130#*#*" which took me to the SIM Card Settings screen. Tapped three-dot menu, tapped, "Add SIM Contact," which took me to the native Huawei Contacts app. In Contacts app for the SIM card, tapped "Add Contact," made dummy contact called "Test" with a ph# of 1234. From list of contacts, tapped the "message" bubble icon next to the new "Test" contact, which opened the stock Messages app.

4. In stock Messages app, typed and sent message with the text "www.youtube.com." For obvious reasons the message doesn't send, but it does appear in the messages window, which renders the draft text's content into a hyperlink to YouTube. Bingo! Tapped link and opened up the YouTube app.

5. From the YouTube app, tapped the three-dot menu again, and tapped Privacy Policy from there. Now I'm into Chrome! Opened Chrome without signing in, and navigated to Google.com.

6. From Google.com, searched and then downloaded apk for Test DPC app. Installed Test DPC and set myself up as the new device owner.

7. Now that I'm the device owner, you'd think it would bypass the Google account verification requirement in HWStartupGuide, but no dice. So, rebooted, took same steps to get back into Chrome. From Chrome, I was able to get to the stock Google device search and navigate to the Settings app.

8. From device Settings app, changed settings to allow installations from unknown sources, then I set the option to allow USB debugging, and opened up the dev options to select "Allow OEM Unlock" in preparation for unlocking the locked bootloader, using the unlock code previously sourced from the official Huawei EMUI unlock code site.

So, to sum up, I've got access to the device in general, can use the web and all the apps on the device, and was thus finally able to disable HWStartupGuide to prevent the previous headache from cropping up again. Here's where the impasse starts.

I have Android SDK and everything I need on my laptop (to the best of my knowledge) to facilitate unlocking, flashing, and all the other fun stuff we love to do with our phones.

I was able to confirm the USB and Android drivers are correct and working fine, as I got both fastboot and adb to recognize and list the device when connected via USB cable to the laptop, and it worked both in command prompt and in PowerShell. Fastboot and ADB commands appear to work when facilitated and entered correctly. That is...UNTIL I tried to use the "fastboot oem unlock <unlock code here>" command. It just says "FAILED" with no error code. I tried this from my stock boot options screen (the screen you get when you boot or restart with power and vol-down pressed), and from the stock recovery screen, both to no avail.

This is where I'm all twisted up. There either doesn't appear to be a true bootloader screen to navigate to, or it's purposefully inaccessible, and I don't know how to get to it. If you do a "adb reboot bootloader" command, it just reboots the phone to Android home screen. The only options from the boot options screen are "Power (turn phone off), "Start" (boot to Android home screen), "bar codes" (screen that shows bar codes for the phone's IMEI, Serial #, etc), and "reboot recovery" (stock EMUI recovery screen), where the only options are 'Wipe/Factory Data Reset," "Wipe Cache," and "Reboot."

I feel like if I could get to a true bootloader screen that allows me to enter adb or fastboot command strings in such fashion that you can enter it and then see the process play out on your device screen, then the unlock code from Huawei would probably work and the bootloader would be unlocked, thereby allowing me to root and flash a better ROM, or at least eliminate bloatware and optimize the device for performance. But for whatever reason, and I assume it's purposeful on the part of TRACFONE/StraightTalk, tbh, there isn't a fastboot-capable bootloader screen like my years of using HTC phones taught me to take for granted.

So there I be...stuck, even WITH the unlock code from Huawei! What a crock! I know TMOUS will apparently unlock it in a month or so, but to me, that's not the point. I should be able to accomplish it on my own with the unlock code I got from Huawei. And that's why I'm throwing my hands up and begging for help.

Is there anything else I can try? Is there any other devious way to perhaps flash a different bootloader interface onto the phone that would allow me to use fastboot commands properly? Is it possible to mount the SD card from bootloader and push an apk to it that would install some kind of generic bootloader screen? I'm now a little out of my league, but I am willing to try just about anything that anyone thinks might work. Any advice or suggestions warmly welcomed...not worried about bricking the phone or anything, as it's not much better than a paperweight in its current form anyway.

Thanks!!

smb282