Everything Huawei Y550 - Root/CWM/TWRP

[GotoDengo]

So wanting to try out a different SIM in my phone, I took off the back cover, removed the battery, swapped SIMs, replaced the battery and tried to get the back cover on but it wouldn't snap shut!?

It turned out that the battery had expanded to about twice it's thickness! It's the original battery that came with the phone.

Needless to say I dropped it into a battery recycling station and have ordered a 'genuine' replacement from AliExpress which I'm waiting for now.

So please check your batteries!

 

[fwiep]

7.1.2. update

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers and @desalesouche, this is today's build containing the May-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20200606-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20200606-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20200606-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will take some time (many months).

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[fwiep]

7.1.2. update

Thanks to the (mighty quick!) LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the June-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20200609-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20200609-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20200609-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will take some time (many months).

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[GotoDengo]

Thanks to the (mighty quick!) LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the June-2020 security patches.

Kind regards,
FWieP

Thanks again for your efforts!

 

[fwiep]

Tutorial update

Hello all,

These days, I reinstalled my dualboot system of Debian (primary) and Ubuntu Studio (music production and Y550-building).
I followed my own tutorial, and found some small errors since the upgrade to v. 20.04 LTS.

To be specific:
- the package libncurses5 has to be installed (alongside or instead of libncurses5-dev, I don't know).
- the package libwxgtk3.0-dev is not (yet) available for Ubuntu 20.04. I removed it from the apt command and my subsequent build succeeded anyway.

I edited the mentioned tutorial accordingly.

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[Saint_13]

Hello all,

These days, I reinstalled my dualboot system of Debian (primary) and Ubuntu Studio (music production and Y550-building).
I followed my own tutorial, and found some small errors since the upgrade to v. 20.04 LTS.

To be specific:
- the package libncurses5 has to be installed (alongside or instead of libncurses5-dev, I don't know).
- the package libwxgtk3.0-dev is not (yet) available for Ubuntu 20.04. I removed it from the apt command and my subsequent build succeeded anyway.

I edited the mentioned tutorial accordingly.

Kind regards,
FWieP

thank you very much, in summer if i find some free time i will try your tutorial.

 

[SurvivorArk]

a stable rom for this phone?

i need a second phone so the only thing i wish is stability
which one do you recommend?
thanks

 

[fwiep]

7.1.2. update

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the July-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20200723-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20200723-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20200723-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will take some time (many months).

Kind regards,
FWieP

---------- Post added at 20:59 ---------- Previous post was at 20:45 ----------

i need a second phone so the only thing i wish is stability
which one do you recommend?
thanks

Hi, welcome to the forum.

By stable, I assume you mean a ROM with relatively long lifespan, with regular security updates?

Personally, I try to buy my devices knowing that LineageOS supports them at that moment. Disadvantage of that, is these are not the most recent (new, hip) devices.
I have had good experience with Motorola (a Lenovo company). We bought two Moto G6 phones, the UI is pretty clean, the phone is quite stable. The monthly security updates are not as fast as I'd like (april 2020 at this moment). But the warranty holds for another year or so. By that time, I hope some LineageOS developer will have added the device to his/her TODO.

The subject of your message suggests you would like a stable ROM for this (Y550) phone. I can recommend my latest build, see previous post. It is a clean LineageOS 14.1 with a kernel made to match the Y550 by (among others) @desalesouche. The only thing I do, is build the custom ROM into an installable image when the upstream LineageOS developers add that month's security patches.

Good luck and kind regards,
FWieP

 

[GotoDengo]

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the July-2020 security patches.

Thanks very much again. I've dirty flashed this and it's working fine so far.

 

[fwiep]

7.1.2. update

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the August-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20200822-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20200822-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20200822-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will take a very long time.

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[GotoDengo]

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the August-2020 security patches.

Thanks again! I've dirtied flashed this and everything is working fine including WiFi.

 

[bahram360]

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the August-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20200822-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20200822-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20200822-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will take a very long time.

Kind regards,
FWieP

Thank you , but Battery consumption is high

 

[fwiep]

7.1.2. update

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the September-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20201006-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20201006-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20201006-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

It looks like the October-2020 patches will be coming in very soon. I'll build and post again, when they do.

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will take a very long time.

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[GotoDengo]

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the September-2020 security patches.
Kind regards,
FWieP

Thanks again. Works fine so far; my WiFi MAC address starts 58 but otherwise no problems.

 

[fwiep]

7.1.2. update

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the October-2020 security patches.

Recent changes: LineageOS 14.1
Kernel: https://github.com/HUAWEI-Y550-Y635/android_kernel_huawei_msm8916/commits/los-14.1

ZIP: lineage-14.1-20201028-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20201028-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20201028-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Known bugs:
- the WiFi MAC-address sometimes switches between a Huawei-prefix 68:a0:f6 and an Airgo-prefix 00:0a:f5 on reboot

My personal Y550's wifi has died, so I cannot test any wifi-related features.
There is a chance I'll get my secondary Y550 back, but that will (still) take a very long time.

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[anborez]

I have Y550-L03 version of phone.
Can i flash it with L01 stock rom?

 

[fwiep]

I have Y550-L03 version of phone.
Can i flash it with L01 stock rom?

I don't know about stock ROMs, but the most recent LineageOS ROMs are suited for all variants (L01, L02 and L03).
Sorry I can't help you.

Kind regards,
FWieP

 

[GotoDengo]

Thanks to the LineageOS-developers this is today's build containing the October-2020 security patches.
Kind regards,
FWieP

Working fine so far!

 

[fwiep]

Good news and request

Hello all,

TL;DR: 1) my Y550-L01's wifi is working again
TL;DR: 2) I'd like your help in testing the WireGuard functionality in this ROM

Today, my personal Y550-L01 was given a new life. I decided to retry flashing the stock firmware to possibly fix the dead wifi (MAC == 02:00:00:00:00:00).
Instead of only flashing BOOT, RECOVERY and SYSTEM from fastboot, I downloaded the complete stock firmware from this thread's post #2.
After putting it on a SD-card and restoring with vol-up + vol-down + power, the wifi worked again!
Now I'm back on my own most recent LineageOS 14.1 and all is working well.

While building this ROM on a new build-PC, I had to rebuild the kernel, too. At first I got an error about WireGuard which couldn't be found. WireGuard, in this kernel? Apparently so. I looked into the script that was supposed to fetch the most recent wg-kernel source code and place it into the kernel directory structure. It seems that the site providing the snapshots has restructured their repositories. So, I edited the script accordingly. Now, I don't get errors during the build, and the most recent snapshot is included.

After flashing the ROM, installing F-droid, then the WireGuard-app via F-droid and importing my tunnel-config, I only get:

Sending handshake initiation
Handshake did not complete after 5 seconds, retrying (try ...)

when enabling the VPN.

Can you help me test the WireGuard-functionality of this new ROM? It has October-2020 patches.
ZIP: lineage-14.1-20201112-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20201112-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20201112-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Update
It appears that WireGuard wasn't actually included in the kernel. Only the source code was downloaded and put into place. But in the kernel config, it was not enabled.
As soon as I did enable it and try to build, I got the following errors:

In file included from ../../../../../../kernel/huawei/y550-vid/net/wireguard/crypto/zinc/curve25519/curve25519.c:26:0:
../../../../../../kernel/huawei/y550-vid/net/wireguard/crypto/zinc/curve25519/curve25519-arm-glue.c:15:20: error: curve25519_nobs causes a section type conflict with curve25519_test_vectors
 static bool *const curve25519_nobs[] __initconst = { &curve25519_use_neon };
                    ^
In file included from ../../../../../../kernel/huawei/y550-vid/net/wireguard/crypto/zinc/curve25519/curve25519.c:81:0:
../../../../../../kernel/huawei/y550-vid/net/wireguard/crypto/zinc/curve25519/../selftest/curve25519.c:12:44: note: 'curve25519_test_vectors' was declared here
 static const struct curve25519_test_vector curve25519_test_vectors[] __initconst = {
                                            ^
/home/fwiep/android/lineage14/kernel/huawei/y550-vid/scripts/Makefile.build:308: recipe for target 'net/wireguard/crypto/zinc/curve25519/curve25519.o' failed
make[3]: *** [net/wireguard/crypto/zinc/curve25519/curve25519.o] Error 1

This is way beyond me - I have no experience in C or building kernels.
I suppose, this is why the original Y550-kernel-builders left WG disabled and abandoned the effort?

If anyone can help - please do. I'd like to see this work

Kind regards and thanks,
FWieP

 

[pndwal]

Hello all,

TL;DR: 1) my Y550-L01's wifi is working again
TL;DR: 2) I'd like your help in testing the WireGuard functionality in this ROM

Today, my personal Y550-L01 was given a new life. I decided to retry flashing the stock firmware to possibly fix the dead wifi (MAC == 02:00:00:00:00:00).
Instead of only flashing BOOT, RECOVERY and SYSTEM from fastboot, I downloaded the complete stock firmware from this thread's post #2.
After putting it on a SD-card and restoring with vol-up + vol-down + power, the wifi worked again!
Now I'm back on my own most recent LineageOS 14.1 and all is working well.

While building this ROM on a new build-PC, I had to rebuild the kernel, too. At first I got an error about WireGuard which couldn't be found. WireGuard, in this kernel? Apparently so. I looked into the script that was supposed to fetch the most recent wg-kernel source code and place it into the kernel directory structure. It seems that the site providing the snapshots has restructured their repositories. So, I edited the script accordingly. Now, I don't get errors during the build, and the most recent snapshot is included.

After flashing the ROM, installing F-droid, then the WireGuard-app via F-droid and importing my tunnel-config, I only get: when enabling the VPN.

Can you help me test the WireGuard-functionality of this new ROM? It has October-2020 patches.
ZIP: lineage-14.1-20201112-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip
MD5: lineage-14.1-20201112-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5
ASC: lineage-14.1-20201112-UNOFFICIAL-y550.zip.md5.asc

Update
It appears that WireGuard wasn't actually included in the kernel. Only the source code was downloaded and put into place. But in the kernel config, it was not enabled.
As soon as I did enable it and try to build, I got the following errors:
This is way beyond me - I have no experience in C or building kernels.
I suppose, this is why the original Y550-kernel-builders left WG disabled and abandoned the effort?

If anyone can help - please do. I'd like to see this work

Kind regards and thanks,
FWieP

Hello Sir!

If you search 'wireguard' in this thread, you'll see @desalesouche actually added it to kernel Dec 2017, and others reported it working fine too.
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/help/to-root-huawei-y500-t2923318/post74897178

He also cited this:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/development/wireguard-rom-integration-t3711635/post74667364 which should help.

But by Aug 2018, problems are reported; '"unable to configure tunnel (wgquick returned 1)" error when try to turn on while Wifi is off.'

@desalesouche promised to revisit wireguard, but I don't think anything was done... This was soon before he left you holding the baby!
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/help/to-root-huawei-y500-t2923318/post77356489

Happy to hear your Y550 got a new lease of life!

Best regards, PW