How to install TWRP Custom Recovery & Root Huawei Mate 10 Lite

Huawei Mate 10 Lite was announced recently. It’s a budget phone with an 18:9 display and impressive hardware inside. Huawei Mate 10 Lite is equipped with a 5.9-inch 1080 x 2160 pixels display having 409 PPI. This phone is powered by Huawei’s in-house Kirin 659 CPU and Mali-T830 MP2 GPU. It has 64 GB internal storage and 4 GB of RAM. At the back, this phone has a dual shooter with 16 MP + 2 MP cameras. It has a dual shooter setup on the front as well having a shooter of 13 MP and one of 2 MP. There is a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. A 3440 mAh battery is placed inside. Out of the box, this phone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat. Huawei Mate 10 Lite is a very good option to go with if you have a mid-range budget and you also want a decent phone.

It’s merely been 2 months since this phone came out, the goodies have already started pouring in. Huawei Mate 10 Lite has already been rooted and it is the first phone of the Mate 10 series to get the TWRP custom recovery. You can now install the TWRP recovery and start customizing your phone. TWRP recovery will allow the Mate 10 Lite owners to install custom ROMs, mods, image files and other zip files on the phone. With the TWRP recovery, you can create a Nandroid backup, EFS backup and also a backup of all the partitions of the phone.

Users can also wipe Dalvik cache of the phone. There is an option to wipe the individual partitions of the phone using a custom recovery. You can change the partition format of the phone as well. There are many other uses of TWRP recovery like sideloading applications and mods. TWRP is your gateway to an entirely different and new world of Android customization. Now that TWRP is available for Mate 10 Lite, its time to unleash the real beast hidden inside this phone.

How to install TWRP Custom Recovery & Root Huawei Mate 10 Lite

We have already posted a guide on how to unlock the bootloader and root Huawei Mate 10 Lite. It’s time to flash TWRP custom recovery now. Here are the steps to install TWRP custom recovery and Root the Huawei Mate 10 Lite.

Precautions & Preparation

• This guide is intended for Huawei Mate 10 Lite only. Do not try this method on any other device otherwise, you may result in bricking it.
• Make sure that your phone’s battery is charged up to 80% in order to avoid any power issues during the flashing process.
• Backup all of your important contacts, call logs, SMS messages and media content to stay on a safe end. Do not forget to create a backup since this process is supposed to wipe your phone completely.
• Enable USB debugging mode on your phone in developer options. To do so, go to settings > about device > tap build number for 7 times. You will have developer options in settings now. Open developer options > Enable USB debugging. If you have the “OEM Unlocking“ option, enable it as well.
• Unlock Huawei Mate 10 Lite bootloader.
• Use your original data cable to establish a connection between your phone and your PC.
• Follow this guide to the letter to avoid any mishap.

Disclaimer: The methods involved in flashing custom recoveries and rooting the device are highly custom. Rooting the device and flashing a custom recover is never recommended by a device manufacturer. In case something goes wrong, TechBeasts or the device manufacturers may not be held responsible. Make sure that you’re doing everything at your own risk.

Required downloads & installations

1. Download and install Huawei USB drivers.
2. Download and install Minimal ADB & Fastboot drivers.
3. Also, download twrp-mate10-lite.img file and rename it to recovery.img.
4. Download SuperSU.zip file and copy it to your phone’s external storage.

How to Unlock Huawei Mate 10 Lite Bootloader

1. Copy the renamed recovery.img file to the Minimal ADB and Fastboot directory which should be in a location such as: C drive > Program Files > Minimal ADB & Fastboot.
2. Connect your Huawei Mate 10 Lite to the computer now.
3. Now open Minimal ADB & Fastboot.exe from your desktop. If you do not have this file on your desktop, then go to your Windows installation drive i.e. C drive > Program Files > Minimal ADB & Fastboot > Press and hold Shift Key + Right-click on an empty area with the open folder > click “Open command window here”.
5. As the command window opens up, enter the following commands one by one.
   1. adb devices
      1. This command will return a list of devices attached with a code verifying connection.
   2. adb reboot bootloader
      1. This command will reboot the phone in bootloader mode.
   3. fastboot devices
      1. This command will verify the connection in fastboot mode.
   4. fastboot boot recovery.img
      1. This will boot your phone in the TWRP recovery.
   5. Now in TWRP, tap Advanced > Terminal.
   6. In the Terminal, type and enter the following command: echo “systemless = true” /data/.supersu
6. Get back to the main menu in TWRP recovery now and tap Install > Locate and select SuperSU.zip file and flash it.
7. Once done, reboot to the system and your Mate 10 Lite should be rooted. That’s all.

Note: The method given above will not install TWRP recovery on your phone. In case you want to install TWRP, you can use the command: fastboot flash recovery recovery.img command in step 4 above. This command will flash the recovery in your phone. We are not sure whether the recovery will stick fine or not since it’s still in the beta stage.