LineageOS 15.1 now available for the Honor View 10, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, and other Project Treble-Compatible Devices

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Project Treble. Some of you might be sick of hearing about it by this time, while others are ecstatic about any news related to the initiative. We at XDA couldn’t be more excited about what it brings to the table, and every week something new happens that adds to the excitement. Recently, a developer was able to bring full Project Treble compatibility to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4. An obscure phone with a MediaTek SoC is able to boot a generic Android build as well, paving the way for improved device longevity well-beyond the end of official manufacturer support. Now, a developer has made Treble-based custom ROMs even more enticing for users as the first LineageOS 15.1 build is available for the Honor View 10 and Huawei Mate 10 Pro (and it works on other Treble-compatible devices as well!)

LineageOS 15.1 for the Honor View 10, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, and other Treble Devices

To recap, Project Treble is a really low-level architectural change in the way Android works, starting with Android 8.0 Oreo. Basically, all of the vendor Hardware Abstraction Layers (HALs, the binaries that Android interfaces with to work with hardware components) are moved to a separate vendor partition and interface with the Android Framework (the OS) in a more standardized way via the HAL Interface Definition Language (HIDL). Google enforces this standardization through the Vendor Test Suite (VTS), which devices must pass in order to be certified to ship with Google Play apps and services. One of the requirements of the VTS is that Treble-compatible devices must be able to boot a generic system image (GSI), which is basically just a stock Android Oreo system image built from Android Open Source Project (AOSP).

The benefit of this requirement for the custom ROM community is that Treble-compatible devices won’t need nearly as much hackery to at least get a basic AOSP ROM up and running. Indeed, devices such as the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, Honor 8 Pro, Honor 9, and the Honor View 10 have very barebone AOSP Android Oreo ROMs available. But most users aren’t interested in running XDA Senior Member phhusson‘s AOSP ROM since it lacks so many features out of the box: no Night Light, no Adaptive Brightness, no Ambient Display, the list goes on. Sure, you can spruce things up a bit by installing a custom framework overlay, the Xposed Framework, or install Substratum, but there’s a lot of effort involved in setting it all up.

For those of you who just want to flash and forget, that’s where LineageOS 15.1 by XDA Recognized Developers Luk1337 and luca020400 comes in. It is based on Android 8.1 Oreo just like the previous GSIs, but it also comes with all of the cool additions that LineageOS is known for. That includes LiveDisplay, Privacy Guard, button customization, and much, much more. If you have a Project Treble compatible device and are interested in trying out AOSP, this might be your perfect option.

Excited? Want to flash LineageOS 15.1 on your Treble-compatible device? Before I direct you to the forum thread where you can download the ROM, there is one very important thing we have to get out of the way.

Warning: the LineageOS developers who created this ROM posted about this on the Honor View 10 forum, and state that it should work on any device with a HiSilicon Kirin 970. You are free to try flashing this ROM on your Treble-compatible device, but be warned that the developers may not choose to support you if you come across any bugs. Notably, the developers received their Honor View 10 devices thanks to the Honor Open Source Program, so that is the only device that is officially supported by them.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s how to install LineageOS 15.1 on your Project Treble compatible device.

How to Install LineageOS 15.1 on the Honor View 10, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, or other Treble-Compatible Devices

Make an off-device backup of all important files. It is very likely that you will need a full data wipe in order for this to boot. Unlock your device’s bootloader. Here’s a guide for the Honor View 10 and here’s one for the Mate 10 series. Reboot to bootloader. The easiest way is to plug in your phone, power it off, then hold power+volume down. Download LineageOS 15.1 from this forum thread. Open a command prompt or terminal window and navigate to the same directory where you downloaded the system image from above. Enter the following command: fastboot flash system system.img Note: replace “system.img” with the exact name of the image you downloaded. At the time of this article’s publication, that would be “system_20180221.img” Reboot the phone. If your phone starts bootlooping, let it continue until it brings you to Huawei’s recovery screen asking you to do a low-level data wipe. Select that option with the power button and let it do its thing. Once the data wipe is finished, you should successfully boot up into LineageOS 15.1.

After that, you’re free to customize whatever you want on the device.

Feature image credits: XDA Senior Member phhusson. Devices shown left to right: Undisclosed MSM8937 Treble-compatible device, Huawei Mate 9, Honor View 10, Allview Viper V3.