Huawei Mediapad M5 Lite Custom Rom

One of the biggest motivations for flashing a Custom ROM on this specific device is the absence of Google Mobile Services (GMS) on newer Huawei firmware. While the MediaPad M5 Lite was released before the US trade ban fully took effect (and thus usually came with GMS pre-installed), updating the official firmware sometimes leads to complications or a lack of app compatibility.

Custom ROMs—especially those based on Android Open Source Project (AOSP)—almost always include GMS out of the box or allow for an easy "GApps" installation, restoring the full Android experience.

To quantify the upgrade, here are real-world tests performed on the SHT-W09 (3GB RAM model):

Note the Netflix issue: Once you unlock the bootloader, you permanently lose Widevine L1 certification. You cannot stream DRM content in HD. If you watch Netflix/Amazon Prime daily, do not flash a custom ROM.

One must also consider the cost-benefit analysis for a developer. Building a custom ROM for a Qualcomm device often involves cherry-picking commits from similar devices (a “device tree”). For the Kirin 659, there are no similar devices with open-source support. Creating a functional device tree from scratch for a tablet with no active user base is a Sisyphean task. A developer could spend 200 hours building a ROM only to find that the stylus pressure sensitivity or the five-speaker array cannot be reversed-engineered. The return on investment—measured in donations, gratitude, and personal satisfaction—is virtually zero.

Furthermore, the rise of Project Treble (introduced with Android 8) gave a faint hope: Generic System Images (GSIs) could theoretically run on any Treble-compatible device. The MediaPad M5 Lite is Treble-compatible (it shipped with Android 8). In ideal circumstances, one could flash a GSI of Android 13. However, even GSIs require a compatible vendor partition and kernel. Huawei’s vendor implementation was so non-standard (due to their custom hardware interfaces) that GSIs either failed to boot or exhibited crippling bugs. Treble was designed for uniformity; Huawei’s EMUI actively rejected that uniformity. One of the biggest motivations for flashing a

So: No fully daily-drivable custom ROM exists.

Despite the difficulty, the Kirin 659 (HiSilicon) development community has kept this device alive. Because Kirin chips lack the full open-source support of Qualcomm Snapdragon, the ROM selection is limited but highly functional. Most ROMs are based on Android 10 or Android 11 and use the LineageOS 17.1/18.1 kernel source as a baseline.

Here are the top three projects currently available (as of 2024-2025): So: No fully daily-drivable custom ROM exists

The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite stands as a monument to the decline of the Android modding era. In 2016, a similar device would have had three or four custom ROMs. By 2018, the combination of locked bootloaders, proprietary SoCs, and a shift toward userland security (Google’s SafetyNet, Widevine L1) killed the enthusiasm. For the average owner, the M5 Lite remains a serviceable media consumption device—provided they never want to run modern apps securely. For the enthusiast, it is a prison.

The story of this tablet is not one of malice but of market forces. Huawei, under pressure from US sanctions and internal restructuring, abandoned the open-source ethos that once defined Android. The community, faced with insurmountable technical barriers, moved on to more welcoming hardware (OnePlus, Xiaomi, Pixels). The MediaPad M5 Lite will likely never see a custom ROM. It will slowly rot on Android 9, its security patches years out of date, until it is finally recycled. It is a reminder that in the world of consumer electronics, “potential” is only valuable if someone is willing to fight for it—and no one fought for this tablet. The silence in its XDA forum is the loudest review of all.

Because the MediaPad M5 Lite supports Project Treble (out of the box with Android 8), you are not limited to device-specific ROMs. You can flash GSI builds of Android 12, 13, or even 14 (using phhusson's AOSP builds).

If you want to modify the tablet without a custom ROM: