Huawei P20 Lite is an old device with a Kirin 659 chipset. It’s not a high-end smartphone so only 1 major update sent for this phone is Android. Originally phone came with EMUI 8 based on Android 8 and later upgraded to EMUI9.1 which is based on Android 9. The free bootloader unlock facility by Huawei is closed, resulting in no custom Rom development for Huawei devices. GSI ROMs are the only hope for old Huawei users. We did an experiment and tried to install ArrowOS vanilla GSI ROM which is based on Android 12. Interestingly phone booted up and all basic functions were working.

Huawei P20 Lite Android 12 Screenshots:

Disclaimer:

• Don’t install if you don’t know what is GSI and how to go back to stock firmware
• Everything you do with your phone is your own responsibility, we are not responsible for your mistakes
• Basic functions call/camera/messages etc tested by us, but if there is any bug we can not resolve.
• By unlocking the bootloader you will lose the warranty
• Charging doesn’t work while the phone is turned off

How to install:

• Make sure the phone running EMUI9.1 (EMUI8 is not supported)
• Back up all important data from your phone, you cannot restore data using Hisuite, so use a different method.
• Unlock the bootloader of your phone (Details Here)
• Download ROM from THIS LINK (Click Here) or click here and download (ArrowOS-12.1-arm64_bvN-Unofficial.img.xz)
• Make sure you download ArrowOS-12.1-arm64_bvN-Unofficial.img.xz)
• Extract the file using WinRAR and you will get an IMG file of the ROM
• Copy “PixelExperience_arm64-ab-11.0-20211009-UNOFFICIAL.img” to the sd card of your phone.
• Download installation tools & patches from this link
• Extract the zip file and copy all zip files to your SD card.
• Then power off the phone and disconnect from pc, then hold the volume down and insert the cable
• The phone will enter fastboot mode
• Open MAF32.exe and flash TWRP (command example=fastboot flash recovery_ramdisk twrp.img)
• Disconnect the phone from pc and hold the volume up and power, Keep holding until appears TWRP recovery mode
• Swipe to allow modifications
• Now tap on wipe >advanced wipe then tick cache, Dalvik cache, system, data, internal storage partitions, and swipe to wipe
• After wiping tick in the system partition only and tap on Repair or Change file system>resize partition>swipe to resize.
• Then go back to the main menu of TWRP
• Tap on install > Tap on install image > Tap on Select Storage > Choose SD CARD and select ArrosOS ROM file
• Select system_image partition to install and swipe to flash
• Once flashing is complete, Don’t reboot
• Tap on Wipe > Advanced Wipe > tick system partition and tap on Repair or Change file system>resize partition>swipe to resize.
• Then go back to the main menu of TWRP and tap on Install > Install Zip>Select Storage>sd card> tap on [RECOVERY]LiteGapps_ zip files and swipe to flash, Don’t reboot, simply go back and flash all other zip files
• Then reboot the system, Tap do not install the TWRP app
• If you did all the steps according to the tutorial, ROM should boot up.

Video Tutorial