Root and port a custom recovery for your Mediatek or Spreadtrum Android device by yourself in just 10 minutes



A Forum member once asked what happened to those times when you only needed to install and run an apk like Framaroot or Kingroot to root your Android phone. Well, those times got fatally injured in Lollipop and died in Marshmallow; from newer Lollipop phones and above, you replace the stock recovery with a custom recovery then flash SuperSU.zip in the custom recovery. As straightforward as this sounds, its quite a headache for the noob and only becomes an effortless task with much experience.

Rewind a little to where I mentioned a custom recovery. Now, you assumed that this would be readily available to download online, not so? Truth is it isn’t for most devices and needs to be built from source or ported. If you’re lucky that someone already did for your model then good for you….but; custom recoveries are often Build Number specific so a custom recovery ported from the stock recovery of a lower build number might not be able to replace the stock recovery when flashed to a phone of a higher build number.

At this point, you probably think its a Herculean task. Some Tech. savvy people might even think I’m painting too difficult a scenario but its the reality we face everyday. Don’t even get me started on the complexity of Build Numbers in Mediatek and Spreadtrum devices. Anyway, the good news is that there’s a way to both root your Mediatek (MTK) or Spreadtrum (SPD) Android phone then port a custom recovery all by yourself and it takes just about 10 minutes…really!

Rooting your Android device

We’ve created a guide on how to root an Android phone using Magisk Manager and patched boot . With this technique, all you need are:

  • The device you wish to root
  • A PC and USB cord
  • The stock boot.img for the device
  • Magisk Manager apk
  • An internet connection

You can obtain the boot.img by extracting it from the firmware or backing up your phone’s ROM using a tool specific for your phone’s chipset. For this Magisk technique, I strongly recommend that you use a boot.img from a firmware which matches your phone’s build number or extract the boot.img from your phone. The exact technique varies with the chipset so search our Forum for how to dump your phone’s firmware. This is to ensure best compatibility (and avoid bricking) but isn’t to say that the boot.img from another build number of your phone model won’t work.

Once you’ve obtained the stock boot.img, you’re good to go. See the video below for the procedure

Porting a custom recovery

Team Hovatek has been porting custom recoveries on request at the Developers section of the Hovatek Forum. We decided to commence the Auto Custom Recovery Porter project to make it possible for almost anybody to port a working custom recovery in seconds. The first release was the MTK Auto Philz Recovery porter. All you need is this tool and the stock recovery.img for your phone (you can obtain it the same way you obtained stock boot.img). After porting your custom recovery, you can then flash it to your device depending on what files you have.

Update

We’ve also released Spreadtrum (SPD) Auto TWRP Recovery porter and Mediatek (MTK) Auto TWRP Recovery porter
The entire process of rooting and porting a working custom recovery now takes less than 10 minutes thanks to the above techniques and the awesome part is that you can do it all by yourself!

Below are videos of our Auto TWRP / Philz porters in action

Mediatek (MTK) Auto Philz recovery porter

Mediatek (MTK) Auto TWRP recovery porter

Spreadtrum (SPD) Auto TWRP recovery porter

Need help getting stock boot.img & recovery.img or backing up your phone’s firmware? leave a comment below


9 thoughts on “Root and port a custom recovery for your Mediatek or Spreadtrum Android device by yourself in just 10 minutes”

  1. Thanks. For me “Mediatek (MTK) Auto Philz recovery porter” worked. The “Mediatek (MTK) Auto TWRP recovery porter” not worked. I have AllView P8 pro with mtk6737t processor. This site is the best and helped me very much.

  2. Thanks for the guide. however, my recovery and boot is in bin format, I tried renaming the bin to img but after porting with the tool, I’m having problem flashing to my device

    1. if they were originally in .bin format then you need to rename to .bin so you can flash with whatever tool you used to backup. you can rename using 7zip file manager. You’re to rename to .bin not .bin.img

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