How To Guide N200 MetroPCS/T-Mobile to OEM

[darkghost568]

A lot less of a guide than a compilation of links and steps I followed a few days ago to get this working. Can confirm everything's going smoothly without hitch. Credit to the respective authors of these threads and tools, and the helpful replies I've got from a few members of this forum. You guys are the real ones.

• First, and perhaps most importantly, I can confirm that the N200 T-Mobile MSM tool DOES work on the MetroPCS variant (which I own) and WILL save you from a hard brick if anything goes horribly WRONG. Just boot to EDL by holding both volume up and down and run the MSM tool from Windows, and let it work its magic.
• Run the debloater script linked here to gain access to the OEM unlock slider in developer options.
• Enable ADB Debugging and `adb reboot bootloader` and follow the steps on the Oneplus site to unlock your bootloader (took me exactly one week for them to email me the unlock key).​
  • I had a lot of trouble getting the posted version of TWRP to mount partitions, wipe, or flash ROMs properly, so:​
• Follow this guide over on the OP8T forum (thanks to @Ethanvio for pointing this my way) to extract the partition images from the latest N200 OxygenOS OTA and flash them manually in fastbootd (`adb reboot fastboot`). I ran into the `product.img FAILED (remote: 'Not enough space to resize partition')` error, so I also had to do the part in the spoiler. Some things of note are to remember to flash the vendor_boot partition as well (present for the N200 but not OP8T), and you can also include the flag `--disable-verity` when flashing the vbmeta & vbmeta_system images if you'd like it disabled.
• For root, download Magisk Manager, patch the boot.img, then flash it via fastboot. You can have Magisk persist after OTA by first installing the update through system updates, then before rebooting, opening Magisk Manager and selecting "Install to Inactive Slot (After OTA)" - reboot via Magisk after this completes.

As I understand it, you can call up T-Mobile request a PIN unlock, so this shouldn't affect your ability to carrier unlock (and the carrier unlock button in the OxygenOS settings suggests this as well), despite this process removing the unlocker app from your phone. Maybe someone can correct me in the comments if I'm way off on this lol.

Posting this mostly for myself to remember the steps, but maybe someone else will find it helpful as well.

 

[bouyakasha]

No matter what I do, I can't get the debloat script to allow to unlock the bootloader.

I have 3 DE2118 - I've tried it on all of them. I've also flashed them using MSM tool to enure the software is fresh.

Any suggestions on what or how I could be using the debloater script wrong? This is what I'm doing:

1) Flashing phones with MSM tool
2) Developer Tools > OFF automatic updates
3) Run debloater script - it says 'successful" for most of them
4) Restarting phone

 

[bouyakasha]

No matter what I do, I can't get the debloat script to allow to unlock the bootloader.

I have 3 DE2118 - I've tried it on all of them. I've also flashed them using MSM tool to enure the software is fresh.

Any suggestions on what or how I could be using the debloater script wrong? This is what I'm doing:

1) Flashing phones with MSM tool
2) Developer Tools > OFF automatic updates
3) Run debloater script - it says 'successful" for most of them
4) Restarting phone

I found the solution. Maybe this will help somebody else:

1) Flashing phones with MSM tool
2) Developer Tools > OFF automatic updates
3) You will noticed that phone will say (a) "OEM Unlocking - Connect to the internet or contact your carrier" it will NOT say (b) "OEM Unlocking - Allow the bootloader to be unlocked" and greyed out. If it says (a) as I think it always will after the MSM tool, you need to insert a TMO SIM, let it connect to the network, and restart.
3) Run debloater script - it says 'successful" for most of them
4) Restarting phone
5) Now it will say "OEM Unlocking - Allow the bootloader to be unlocked" and not be greyed out, thanks to the debloater.

 

[oCAPTCHA]

Something that is not well known, is that the OEM unlocking toggle is grayed out with that "OEM Unlocking - Connect to the internet or contact your carrier" message until you have allowed google play services to run with internet access. I suspect it submits and checks hardware ID's against a blacklist before Google sends a response whether to allow the device to allow OEM unlocking. For the unlocked version, this was all that was required. For the T-mobile / Metro versions, you have the extra SIM unlock software restriction steps afterwards.

 

[jilebi]

Something that is not well known, is that the OEM unlocking toggle is greyed out until you have allowed google play services to run with internet access. I suspect it submits and check the hardware ID's against a blacklist before they send a response to allow the device to be OEM unlocked.

You are correct. That is not well known, that one needs internet access before it can be ungreyed. Thanks for sharing.

 

[yellowsnow4free]

Thanks @darkghost568 and @bouyakasha for your info in this thread!

After 5 months of waiting (1 month on Metro to start the process), I finally SIM unlocked both of my parents Metro N200s today. From a software standpoint, it sounds like I can "convert" these Metro phones to the OEM version (direct from OnePlus) and get OTAs, right? Is this the same as a bootloader unlock? I've done SIM unlocks and bootloader unlocks before, but the term "OEM unlock" is new to me.

Just want to confirm before I start looking into this.

Thanks!

 

[darkghost568]

Thanks @darkghost568 and @bouyakasha for your info in this thread!

After 5 months of waiting (1 month on Metro to start the process), I finally SIM unlocked both of my parents Metro N200s today. From a software standpoint, it sounds like I can "convert" these Metro phones to the OEM version (direct from OnePlus) and get OTAs, right? Is this the same as a bootloader unlock? I've done SIM unlocks and bootloader unlocks before, but the term "OEM unlock" is new to me.

Just want to confirm before I start looking into this.

Thanks!

Not quite. The legit OnePlus OEM can get OTA updates, but the converted models tend to fail some checks during the on-device upgrade process, especially when it comes to incremental OTA update packages (@ / AndyYan has talked about this a bit across other threads before). However, you can still install the full update packages manually via the steps in the OP, and for incremental updates, following my guide here. It's worked fine for me until the most recent 11.0.7.0 incremental OTA since that required recent versions of packages that contained breaking dependencies/version mismatches for the update_payload_extractor tool, which hasn't been updated, so ymmv

 

[yellowsnow4free]

Not quite. The legit OnePlus OEM can get OTA updates, but the converted models tend to fail some checks during the on-device upgrade process, especially when it comes to incremental OTA update packages (@ / AndyYan has talked about this a bit across other threads before). However, you can still install the full update packages manually via the steps in the OP, and for incremental updates, following my guide here. It's worked fine for me until the most recent 11.0.7.0 incremental OTA since that required recent versions of packages that contained breaking dependencies/version mismatches for the update_payload_extractor tool, which hasn't been updated, so ymmv

Thanks for the prompt reply!

I'd really like OEM OTA updates, but since the phones are working OK for now perhaps I'll leave the phones as-is.