From chinese to international version (with root, multilang and gapps)
Just a little tuto about how I managed to re-flash the ROM of the Huawei Honor 3 bought in China with an international ROM from needrom.com. As you may know, all chinese smartphones may include an English version, but never the Google Play store, Gmail, … And of course, are not rooted.
(On windows)
- Put your phone in USB debugging mode (see below if you don’t know how)
- Go to http://www.needrom.com/mobile/huawei-honor-3/ (disable adblock if you have it)
- Download the first file, not the updates. The others are original, un-rooter version without gapps and so on.
- Run the .cmd file. (Without the chinese characters it’s called 3__HN3-U01_.cmd). It’s in chinese, but you just have to type “enter”.
- After 2 or 3 minutes it will reboot in recovery mode.
- Choose “Wipe data/factory reset”, and choose “yes – delete all data”. This step is very important. If you don’t do that, you’ll mix the two roms… Choose also “wipe cache”.
- Choose “reboot now”.
Change language
Go in settings. It’s the icon on the main screen with a gear :
Click on the language menu. It’s the one with an icon of letter”A” :
Click on the first item and choose your preferred language :
Enable USB debugging
Like for the language, go in settings and choose “about phone” :
Type 7 times on the “build number menu”. I know it’s weard but it’s the way to do it !
Now, click on the new menu that appeared “developer options”
And finally, check usb debugging :
Troubleshooting
- Error at startup : your phone can tell you twice that a process has stop. It won’t come a third time, so just ignore that. You screen may be black a little too, just lock your phone, unlock in message modes and it won’t happen again.
- Get rid of the Huawei “home” : you cannot really remove it, but you can install “Apex launcher” or “Nova launcher” which arethe normal google home but slightly enhanced. After installing press the home button, choose the apex or nova launcher and type “always”. For them to work properly, you should install google search from the playstore too.
- If nothing happen after running the .cmd file, maybe you have a driver problem. Install the software of your phone (HiSuite for the Huawei Honor 3.
- I woudn’t advise doing system updates. If it’s working, don’t try… If you want to try other roms like the ones of needrom.com, remember always to do a full wipe ! If the installer don’t reboot you in recovery, whhen the system has rebooted, go in the windows command line (type “cmd” in the windows search prompt), go to the folder where your rom installer is and type “adb reboot recovery” to reboot in recovery. I tried a lot of rom on this website and this was the best at time of writing… The only one removing the chinese apps and dooing everything I said is this one. And the changelog between the 113 and 119 version doesn’t seem that important…