Lenovo Tab M11 - TrebleDroid/treble_experimentations GitHub Wiki

Lenovo Tab M11 Treble Guide

This guide provides a hardware-level method to bypass Lenovo's dm-verity protections and successfully flash custom GSIs without bootloops or red screen errors.

Requirements

  • PC with mtkclient (bkerler) and adb platform-tools installed.
  • Desired GSI image (Android 15 or Android 16 recommended).
  • Optional: A secondary Android device with the Bugjaeger app and an OTG cable (if not using a PC for the fastboot phase).

Hardware Support

Component Comment
Wi-Fi Works
Speaker / Mic Works
Camera Works

Developer Notes

  • Android 15 (AndyYan LineageOS arm64_vn_light): Absolute peak performance. Wi-Fi, audio, and camera work flawlessly out of the box. Highly recommended for daily use.
  • Android 16 (risingOS VANILLA): Boots successfully. Wi-Fi, audio, and camera are fully functional despite the older VNDK 33 framework. The system UI loads up instantly.

[!NOTE]

Step 1: The Safe Charging Pause

BROM mode drains the battery cell massively during direct read/write operations. Do not attempt to flash with a low battery, as a power drop during structural flashing will cause a permanent hard-brick.

  1. Unplug the tablet from your PC.
  2. Connect the device to a standard wall charger for at least 15 minutes.
  3. Ensure the battery level is at 60% - 80% before proceeding.

[!NOTE]

Step 2: The Smart Backup

Dumping the entire storage structure blindly will take over 5 hours and unnecessarily fill your drive. It is recommended to exclude the user data partition.

  1. Connect your tablet in BROM Mode to your PC.
  2. Open the mtkclient graphical interface (GUI).
  3. In the partition map list, manually deselect userdata.
  4. Dump the remaining firmware. Your super partition will be roughly 11 GB, but it serves as your 100% reliable safety net.

[!NOTE]

Step 3: Bypassing dm-verity

Lenovo devices implement a series of security tables (vbmeta_a/b, vbmeta_system_a/b, vbmeta_vendor_a/b) that block unsigned system image modifications.

  1. Within the mtkclient GUI, click on Unlock Bootloader (this automatically modifies the seccfg layer).
  2. Immediately open a Terminal / Command Prompt window inside your mtkclient directory and execute the following global chipset command:
mtk da vbmeta 3
  • Note: This command scans the device partition table, automatically localizes all 6 instances of vbmeta, and patches their headers globally to disable verification entirely.
  • False Warning Handling: On initial boot, you may see a red alert stating "Dm verity corrupted". This is a false string cached in the display loop. Simply click the Power button to bypass it, and the device will proceed to boot safely within 5 seconds.

[!NOTE]

Step 4: Flashing the GSI

Flashing can be executed either via a standard PC terminal layout or directly from another mobile device using Bugjaeger over an OTG connection.

  1. Reboot the tablet directly into FASTBOOTD mode (execute the command below or hold Vol Down + Power until the display strictly reads fastbootd):
adb reboot fastboot
  1. (Optional) Free up system logical allocation blocks if you run into structural space errors:
fastboot delete-logical-partition product_a
  1. Erase the stock Lenovo system partition configuration:
fastboot erase system
  1. Flash your custom GSI image (rename your downloaded file to system.img for convenience):
fastboot flash system system.img

[!NOTE]

Step 5: Formatting /data

It is mandatory to wipe the old stock structural encryption data completely to allow the new GSI environment to initialize.

  1. From the Fastbootd screen menu, select Reboot to recovery or execute via terminal:
fastboot reboot recovery
  1. In the recovery interface, select Wipe Data / Factory Reset.
  • Note: The process might appear frozen at first. Give the script 30 seconds to 1 minute to finish calculation.
  1. Reboot into the system environment:
fastboot reboot