Update Huawei Ascend P7 L10 to Android 5.1.1 !

UDPATE: Because of certain issues with the initial article, I’ve researched the update process thoroughly and updated the article accordingly, to resolve the initial direct B830 update issues.

I was a bit tired of waiting for the stupid Android 5.1.1 (Lollipop) update to show up within the phone updater, so I’ve taken things into my own hands…

Here is what you need:

• Huawei Ascend P7 (unbranded European P7-L10 only!) smartphone with fully charged battery
• microSD card inserted in the phone
• USB cable
• 7-zip, WinRAR, PeaZip or other archiver capable of unpacking archives with updates

Plus the following updates:

• Ascend P7-L10 B621 firmware
• Ascend P7-L10 B621 CUST Hotfix
• Ascend P7-L10 B830 firmware
• Ascend P7-L10 B839 firmware

Latest update:

• Ascend P7-L10 B852 OTA firmware

You have to first have B839 installed on your phone before you can upgrade to B852. OTA updates are incrimental and they have to be installed in a correct order! B839 -> B852 !

This update ONLY supports following existing builds:

P7-L10V100R001C00BXXX
P7-L10V100R001C900BXXX

Check Settings -> About Phone -> Build number if numbers match. In my case, the first one was a match, the XXX can be any number, it was 135 in my case followed by SP04. But I don’t think that’s important. BXXX numbers however are very important!

If they don’t match, anything you do in advance is on your own risk! I recommend you don’t update it if the version numbers don’t match.

Updating process for versions lower than B621

I recommend wiping the phone prior updating to avoid potential issues. Backup your internal data and transfer/deactivate your Google Authenticator codes before you perform factory reset!

1. Download B621 firmware, unpack archive and copy entire dload folder to your Ascend P7 microSD card root using USB cable.
2. Turn off your phone. Wait for it to fully shut down.
3. Press VolumeUp+Power buttons and release them when logo appears on screen.
4. Select Wipe Cache partition and then Wipe data/factory reset.
5. Restart the phone and skip all the first start settings.
6. Shut down the phone.
7. Press VolumeUp+VolumeDown+Power buttons until the phone starts. This will force install B621 update.
8. Download B621 CUST Hotfix, unpack it and copy entire dload folder to microSD card. This will replace old update files (confirm overwriting the files).
9. Shut down the phone.
10. Press VolumeUp+VolumeDown+Power buttons until the phone starts. This will force install B621 CUST Hotfix update.
11. Download B830, unpack it and copy entire dload folder to microSD card. This will replace old update files (confirm overwriting the files).
12. Shut down the phone.
13. Press VolumeUp+VolumeDown+Power buttons until the phone starts. This will force install B830 update.
14. Download B839, unpack it and copy entire dload folder to microSD card. This will replace old update files (confirm overwriting the files).
15. Shut down the phone.
16. Press VolumeUp+VolumeDown+Power buttons until the phone starts. This will force install B839 update.
17. DONE!
18. Setup your phone by adding Google Account or simply factory reset it again for first start setup wizard to appear.

It looks complicated, but after step 7, it’s basically a repeating task for each build.

Updating process if you are running a version B609 or newer

If you’re using B609 or later (because your phone arrived with it when new or it updated itself to this version), you should be fine updating directly to B839, but you strictly have to use a full version update which is around 1,5 GB in size (the above link).

Updating process if you have already updated directly to B830 or B839 and you’re experiencing functionality problems

If you have upgraded from lets say B135 directly to B830 or B839, like I have, you have most likely experienced several issues after doing factory reset. Missing keyboard, lockscreen and wallpaper images locked together, missing Motion Control settings etc. In this case you have to first downgarde your phone back to B621. You have to use the same chain of upgrades, just in reverse to downgrade your phone. I had B839 installed, so I had to first downgrade it to B830 and then B621. Made a factory reset and then repeated the above B621 updating process, step by step. Updater may say that firmware upgrade failed in the very end of each downgrade, but don’t worry, it will work anyway. You can check your build version number on each downgrade step if you want to be sure. Going back from B621 to B839 should not show any more FAILED messages. It should successfully update them.

Why all these problems appear?

Apparently the CUST issues happen when manually transitioning from Huawei’s EMUI 2.x custom interface to latest versions that use EMUI 3.x. It somehow conflicts. But if it’s already running EMUI 3.x, there should be no problems updating directly to latest version.

Synopsis

Everything is working perfectly now, no issues, no missing features, just the latest OS and super smooth functionality. From now on, you should receive updates through integrated updater or by new builds (I might update the article with that in the future). Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) is allegedly also planned even for Ascend P7, so it might be interesting. We’ll see…

Enjoy!

PS: If you need any extra info, ask me down below and I’ll check it out for you.