How to Root the Huawei P9 Lite

The Huawei P9 Lite is a variant of the original Huawei P9 that also has another variant called P9 Plus. The P9 Lite, as the name implies, is a lightweight competitor phone that comes with some great specs including 2GB and 3GB RAM options, 16GB internal storage, and Android 6.0 Marshmallow on-board.

Even though the phone runs the latest version of Android on-board, there’re still many features that it doesn’t pack with itself and those can be added by rooting it. When you root an Android phone, you allow yourself to load the so-called root-only apps on the phone that utilize the actual power of the phone and let you customize it to a greater extent.

When you root your Huawei P9 Lite, not only can you add new features to it, but you can also remove the existing stock apps from the phone that you don’t use a lot. That way you can reclaim the precious memory space on the phone and use it for something more useful – such as for more root-only apps that actually do something useful for you than just sitting there on your phone’s homescreen.

So, without further ado, here’s how you can go about rooting the Huawei P9 Lite and getting a custom recovery installed on it:

Before You Begin

1. This could void the warranty of your device. We won’t be held responsible for anything that happens from doing this tutorial so please proceed at your own risk.
2. This procedure uses commands for the Windows version of Fastboot. If you’re on Linux or Mac, the commands will slightly vary for you.
3. Since this’ll unlock the bootloader, all the data on your device will be erased. So please go ahead and backup everything that you wish to keep.
4. You should have installed ADB on your PC. Install it if you haven’t already.
5. This should also flash a custom recovery called TWRP on your device.
6. You should only do this procedure on a Huawei P9 Lite.

How to Root the Huawei P9 Lite

To root the device, you’ll first unlock the bootloader, flash a custom recovery, and then use the custom recovery to flash SuperSU to actually root the phone. Here’s how to do that:

Downloading Required Files

1. Download P9 Lite Root Package and save it to your desktop.
   P9 Lite Root Package

Unlocking the Bootloader on the Huawei P9 Lite

1. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone on your device and tap on Build number for 7-8 times and it’ll say you’re a developer. You’ve just unlocked the developer menu by doing that.
2. Head to the newly unlocked menu at Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
3. Head to Menu > Settings > Developer options and enable OEM Unlocking.
4. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone > Status and note down the serial number you see on your screen.
5. Open the dial-pad on your device and dial *#*#1357946#*#* and you will see your product number. Note it down as you’re gonna use it in the following steps.
6. Dial *#06# from the dial-pad of your device and note down the 15-digit IMEI number of your device.
7. Open a web browser on your PC and head over to the Huawei’s Bootloader Unlock website and create a new account if you don’t already have one and then sign-in.
8. The site will ask you to input your device’s details for it to be able to generate a bootloader unlock code for you. Do so and submit the form.
9. You should receive an unlock code on your email address from Huawei.
10. Plug in your device to your PC using a USB cable.
11. Open the ADB folder located in the C:/ drive of your PC and hold down Shift on your keyboard and right-click anywhere on the screen and select Open command window here.
12. When the command prompt window opens, type in the following command and hit Enter:
    adb reboot bootloader
13. Your device should reboot into the bootloader mode.
14. When the device enters the bootloader mode, type in the following command into the command prompt window and hit Enter. Make sure to replace KEY with the unlock code you have received from Huawei.
    fastboot oem unlock KEY
15. Follow the on-screen instructions for unlocking the bootloader on your device.
16. When the bootloader’s unlocked, reboot your device by typing in the following command into the command prompt window and hitting Enter:
    fastboot reboot

There you go, you’ve successfully unlocked the bootloader on your Huawei P9 Lite. It’s time to flash a custom recovery on your device and the following section teaches how to do exactly that:

Flashing a Custom Recovery on the Huawei P9 Lite

1. Head to Menu > Settings > About phone on your device and tap on Build number for 7-8 times and it’ll unlock the developer menu for you.
2. Head to the unlocked menu at Menu > Settings > Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
3. Plug in your device to your PC using a USB cable.
4. Copy twrp.img from your desktop over to the ADB folder located in the C:/ drive of your PC. It’s the folder where adb.exe and fastboot.exe exist.
5. Open the ADB folder and hold down Shift and right-click anywhere on the screen and select Open command window here.
6. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter:
   adb reboot bootloader
7. Your device should reboot into the bootloader mode.
8. When your device enters the bootloader mode, type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter:
   fastboot flash recovery twrp.img
9. It’ll start flashing TWRP Recovery on your device.
10. When it’s done flashing a recovery, reboot your device by entering in the following command into the command prompt window and pressing Enter:
    fastboot reboot

TWRP Recovery’s now up and running on your Huawei P9 Lite. Let’s see how you can root your device now:

Rooting the Huawei P9 Lite

1. Connect your device to your PC using a USB cable.
2. Copy Root-SuperSU-v2.65.zip from your desktop over to the internal storage of your device.
3. When SuperSU .zip has been copied, disconnect your device from your PC.
4. Turn off your device.
5. Turn your device back on in recovery mode by pressing and holding down Volume Up and Power buttons together for a few seconds.
6. When your device enters the recovery mode, tap on Install to install a new file on your device.
7. Navigate to your internal storage and select SuperSU .zip that you copied earlier to be installed on your device.
8. Tap on Swipe to Confirm Flash to begin flashing SuperSU on your device.
9. Wait for TWRP to flash SuperSU on your device.
10. When it’s done flashing SuperSU, reboot your device by tapping Reboot followed by System.

Cheers, your Huawei P9 Lite is now rooted and has a custom recovery also.

Now that your device’s rooted, you can head over to David’s how to load a custom ROM on an Android device tutorial to learn how you can flash a custom ROM on your device. Once you’ve learnt that, you can head to our huge Android custom ROMs repository to find all the available ROMs that you can flash on your device.

Let us know how this worked for you!