If you do manage to unlock your bootloader via a paid service, your best bet is using a . Since the MatePad 10.4 Go to product viewer dialog for this item.
If you own this tablet today, stick with stock HarmonyOS and use virtual solutions. But if you have a dusty MatePad 10.4 sitting in a drawer with an unlocked bootloader from 2021—you hold a rare piece of hacking history.
: Open-source unlockers like PotatoNV only work on older Kirin chipsets (e.g., Kirin 960/659), while the 2021 MatePad typically uses newer hardware that remains uncracked. Current Software State huawei matepad 104 custom rom 2021
: Without an unlocked bootloader, you cannot flash custom recoveries like TWRP or install third-party operating systems such as LineageOS. Current Software Landscape for MatePad 10.4 (2021) Instead of custom ROMs, development for the MatePad 10.4
Not everything was perfect. The camera bug persisted in a few edge cases; an app crash erased a half-finished shopping list; a system update from an automated server once tried to reassert itself and Liao had to roll back, tracing the conflict to a misaligned daemon. He learned to read logcats and Git diffs the way others learned to read medical reports — with patience and the humility that comes from realizing how much can go unseen. When he posted his own patch to the thread — a simple tweak that prevented a boot-loop on certain builds — NebulaForge replied with a single emoji and a note: "Nice catch. PR accepted." The line of text felt like a handshake across the internet. If you do manage to unlock your bootloader
The core of the process happens in Fastboot mode. The basic commands are fastboot erase system , fastboot flash system system.img , and fastboot -w to wipe user data. There are many detailed video tutorials online that show the exact console process step by step.
In 2018, Huawei completely discontinued its official bootloader unlocking service. Because a custom ROM requires an unlocked bootloader to flash custom files (like TWRP or LineageOS), the modding landscape for this tablet is heavily restricted. But if you have a dusty MatePad 10
: Huawei's official stance is that the unlock code service is terminated to ensure a "better user experience".
Years later, the MatePad showed signs of an itinerant life: a hairline crack along one corner, battery capacity that no longer matched the factory spec, a faint dent where his bag had betrayed it on a train. The custom ROM he’d flashed in 2021, though, had lived on as a framework of small interventions — community patches, a repository of forks with useful features, a handful of users who updated the kernel to wring another season out of aging hardware. When the tablet finally reached the end of its usable life, it was not discarded with a gnostic shrug. Liao took it apart carefully, salvaging screws and boards, keeping the screen as a reminder of afternoons and soft, late-light coding sessions with Mei.
Project Treble isolates the core Android OS framework from the low-level vendor drivers. This allows a single, unmodified Android system image to run on various hardware configurations. If your MatePad is running Android 10 or higher under EMUI, it supports Project Treble. Popular GSI Choices