OpenKirin brings stock Android to Huawei and Honor devices

OpenKirin is a fresh project that supports 17 handsets and tablets with EMUI 8, the only problem with it being that Huawei plans to shut down its bootloader unlock service in less than a month.

The aim of this project is to help the users of these Huawei and Honor devices to easily flash a stock Android ROM instead of the custom interface developed by the Chinese company that some might not enjoy.

The list of supported devices includes budget ones like the Honor 6X and the Huawei P10 Lite, but goes all the way up to the high-end devices such as the Honor View 10 and the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.

To make it all even better, OpenKirin does not simply support Google’s stock Android images. The ROMs supported at this time are the well-known LineageOS, CarbonROM, and Resurrection Remix OS.

Returning to the supported devices, we should also mention the MediaPad M5 and MediaPad M5 Pro tablets. To get started with the whole OpenKirin flashing ordeal, you should request a bootloader unlock code from Huawei — and be sure to do this before July 22, the day when the service is supposed to go down. After unlocking the bootloader, everything should go smoothly.

The OpenKirin installation instructions are available on this page.

After July 22, we will probably hear about non-official methods to unlock the bootloader of Huawei and Honor devices, but until that happens, the best thing to do would be to take advantage of the official bootloader unlocking method.