Last Updated on September 7, 2024 by Mathew Diekhake

After getting the latest Huawei Honor 5C and exploring its features, the one best thing you can do with it is root the Android operating system. By rooting your phone, you are allowing yourself to install root-requiring apps, flash a custom ROM, flash a custom kernel, and do all sorts of customizations on your phone.

Before you can root your Huawei Honor 5C, you need first to unlock the bootloader and then flash a custom recovery on the phone. That’s exactly what the guide below teaches you do.

Huawei Honor 5C

So, go ahead and get a custom recovery installed on that beast:

Files You Need

  • This tutorial has been written keeping the Windows version of Fastboot in mind. The following guide should work on Linux and Mac, too, but for that, you need to have either this or this installed on your machine.
  • Ensure that ADB USB drivers are installed on your Windows computer. Install them if they are not already.
  • Since this will unlock the bootloader, it will erase all the data stored on your phone. So, please backup everything that you wish to preserve.
  • The guide will install a custom recovery called TWRP on your phone.
  • Download Fastboot to your computer. It will be used to execute commands on your phone.
  • Download TWRP Recovery to your computer. It is the custom recovery that you are going to install on your phone.
  • You should only try this on a Huawei Honor 5C phone. If you did this on any other phone, you would end-up bricking the phone.

Unlocking the Bootloader on the Huawei Honor 5C

  1. Unzip files from both Fastboot and TWRP Recovery over to your computer by right-clicking on each of them one by one and choosing Extract here.
  2. Head over to the Huawei Bootloader Unlock website and get yourself an unlock code for your phone. The code will help you unlock the bootloader on your phone.
  3. Head to Menu->Settings->About phone on your phone and tap on Build number for 7-8 times and it will say you are a developer. It has unlocked the developer menu on your phone.
  4. Head to the unlocked menu at Menu->Settings->Developer Options and turn on USB debugging.
  5. With USB debugging enabled, plug in your phone to your PC using a compatible USB cable.
  6. Launch a command prompt window in the Fastboot folder by opening the folder, holding down Shift on your keyboard and right-clicking anywhere on the screen and selecting Open command window here.
  7. When the command prompt window opens, type in the following command and hit Enter:
    adb reboot bootloader
  8. Your phone will reboot into the bootloader mode.
  9. Type in the following command into the command prompt window and press Enter:
    fastboot devices
  10. Make sure your phone appears in the list.
  11. Now, type in the following command replacing KEY with the unlock code you have received from Huawei into the command prompt window and press Enter:
    fastboot oem unlock KEY
  12. Follow the on-screen instructions to unlock the bootloader on your phone.
  13. When it’s done unlocking bootloader, reboot your phone using the following command:
    fastboot reboot
  14. Your phone should reboot.

You have successfully unlocked the bootloader on your Huawei Honor 5C and getting a custom recovery installed on the phone is now a breeze. Here’s how:

Installing TWRP Recovery on the Huawei Honor 5C

  1. Head to Menu->Settings->About phone on your phone and tap on Build number for 7-8 times and it will unlock the developer menu for you.
  2. Head to Menu->Settings->Developer options and turn on USB debugging.
  3. Plug in your phone to your computer using a suitable USB cable.
  4. Copy TWRP Recovery over to the Fastboot folder.
  5. Open a command prompt window in the Fastboot folder by opening the folder, holding down Shift on your keyboard and right-clicking anywhere on the screen and selecting Open command window here.
  6. When the window opens, type in the following command and press Enter:
    adb reboot bootloader
  7. It will reboot your phone into the bootloader mode.
  8. When the phone enters the bootloader mode, issue the following command using the command prompt window. Make sure to replace recovery.img with the actual name of the recovery image you have downloaded to your computer:
    fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
  9. Wait for it to flash TWRP Recovery on your phone. It should not take too long to do that.
  10. When it’s done installing TWRP, reboot your phone using the following command:
    fastboot reboot
  11. Your phone will reboot.

And voila, your Huawei Honor 5C now has unlocked bootloader and a custom recovery running on it.

Now that you have everything to root your phone, head over to our how to root the Huawei Honor 5C tutorial to learn how you can root your device using the things you just installed on your phone.

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