[General Topics] Deleted member 11920245:
I've been scouring the web for a very long time to try and modify and root my phone (Huawei Y9 2018 FLA-LX1) but now I have switched to a more modern phone (Galaxy A24) which means that I don't need this old phone anymore

however, just so that all of my effort dont go to waste, I'll be making this thread to document all of the knowledge I had collected when trying to root this phone or try to install Custom ROMs on it, also take this with a massive grain of salt cuz I'm not some android modding connoisseur, im just a newbie who had too much time to waste, this works especially with my model, but idk of it will work with other huawei phones, even if they use the same chipset as mine (looking at you P20 Lite)

WARNING: THIS THREAD IS ONLY FOR PEOPLE WITH THE SAME PHONE AS ME (OR OTHER PHONE THAT USE THE "Kirin" CHIP AND EMUI)

without further ado, let's begin!

first and foremost, you MUST have a backup of everything on your phone, things such as notes, apps, images, all data, music, passwords, wifi passwords, browser data and accounts, etc etc.

also, you should have a copy of your device's stock firmware, cuz incase if anything goes wrong, you can always resort to flashing your original firmware to avoid risking bricking your phone

If you are an advanced user and know how to safely extract firmware directly from your phone, you can skip the first step, however: keep following these steps carefully if you don't wanna waste time and sanity.

1. DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE:

go to https://professorjtj.github.io/ and search for your phone model, vendor and region to download the appropriate firmware, you can find all of this information in the "about phone" section or whatever it was called

MAKE SURE THE DOWNLOADED FIRMWARE IS THE PROPER ONE WITH NO HICCUPS OR PAUSES DURING DOWNLOADS, WE DONT WANT TO END UP IN A BOOTLOOP

1.1 Download the app "Treble Info", its available on both F-Droid and google play, open it and see if your phone supports project treble or not

if it says "Generic System Image Found!" Then CONGRATS, we're still not done

go to the "Details" tab at the bottom and look for "System As Root" and see if it is enabled, if it is then that means that you can install modern Roms that use A/B partitons

now scroll down to the bottom and look for CPU architecture and Binder architecture, CPU architecture has to be ARM64 and Binder architecture is 64-bit too, the binder architecture is not a hard requirement but it is a suggestion because its extremely rare to find a modern custom rom that uses something else other than 64

2. time for Unlocking the bootloader (probably the hardest part in all of this)

huawei has announced several years back that they will stop providing bootloader codes for all new devices starting from may 24th 2018 for both huawei and honor devices, this caused an uproar in the modding community of, but huawei did not revert the change and continued anyways, so unless you grabbed a bootloader code for your phone before that date, there would be no way to obtain bootloader codes to unlock the phone...

Or is there?

*vsauce music plays*

first, im gonna assume that you aren't afraid of risking your phone being bricked or worried about your warranty being void or anything of that sort

there are two methods for unlocking the bootloader, a free one (if done properly) and paid one, we will be going throught the free way in this thread

the paid method is safer and easier, but costs money ofc

the free method is a bit trickier and not as easy, but still much easier than yout think, however, for the free method you need to find a way to remove the back cover of your smartphone so we can access the hardware inside it, don't worry we won't be going deep into the phone, just the surface of it

most of this thread will be copy pasted from https://github.com/mashed-potatoes/PotatoNV anyways

Make sure your device is compatible

Are you sure you're actually using a Huawei/Honor device?

Open the Settings → About phone. Check the CPU: it should be HiSilicon Kirin. If it is not your case (MediaTek, Qualcomm), then your device is not supported.

Okay, now you know CPU model. It should be one of these:

Kirin 620

Kirin 650

Kirin 655

Kirin 658

Kirin 659

Kirin 925

Kirin 935

Kirin 950

Kirin 960

100% incompatible CPUs with PotatoNV: Kirin 710, 710A, 710F, 810, 970, 980, 985, 990 & newer.

As for Kirin 710, 710F, 970 & 980, there is an alternative paid option

you need two pieces of software on your machine in order for this to work properly, a tool called PotatoNV and something called Huawei USB COM 1.0 Drivers as well as adb tools, you can download potatonv and the huawei drivers from here https://github.com/mashed-potatoes/PotatoNV/

make sure you install the drivers, the installation procedure for it is self explanatory, don't worry about the Chinese characters cuz these drivers weren't meant to be public anyways

when you finish installing the drivers, open potatonv with administrator privileges

by the way it is recommended to have another person in this process, they don't need to be tech savvy, we just need another hand in some parts of this proccess

you need: A windows machine (NOT A VM), a good USB cable to plug your phone and PC together, a thin tool to remove the back cover of the phone, and something thin, small and conductive, say tweezers, small nail clipper or even a small fork

in order to confirm whether its conductive or not, see if it sticks to a magnet or not, if it does, then it's viable choice

the page https://github.com/mashed-potatoes/PotatoNV#getting-inside has all necessary steps that you need to take to unlock the bootloader, as well as a video tutorial

however if there is anything confusing you feel free to ask here in this thread, there is no telegram channel.

3. Now, for installing roms

although due to the obscure nature of my phone i wasnt able to find any rom specifically for my phone, but since it supports modern roms and has support for SAR and treble and 64bit architecture, i was able to install one of thee roms here https://github.com/phhusson/treble_experimentations/wiki/Generic-System-Image-(GSI)-list

this is an updated list of modern and supported gsi roms that could be installed on your phone if it supports the requirements above, you can find old but working roms at the very bottoms if the above roms are too heavy on your phone

4. TWRP

although there is no twrp image specifically for my fla-lx1, the closest i could find that worked on my phone was the TWRP image for the huawei p20 lite because it was using the same chip as my phone (Kirin 659), i dont know about the rest

5. ROOT

i followed these old instructions on how to patch recovery ramdisk on my phone so at least i have semi working root https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk...a5a3f9c39e31e78ba0032a/docs/install.md#huawei

and yeah thats it for now, bye.