Rooting Nokia 3.2, European version

I recently bought a Nokia 3.2 phone with the sole intention of rooting it so that I could play around with it. The phone was just around 70e on Amazon and comes with Snapdragon, so it was an obvious choice. However, I learned quickly after receiving it that the guides online for rooting Nokia 3.2 were terrible. So I compiled a tutorial here explaining how I rooted the phone. This should work with mostly any Android phone, and in fact you can root whichever firmware version of your Nokia 3.2 00EEA with this method. Android 9 or 10, doesn't matter, this one will work for sure. 😎

Unlock the Bootloader

First things first this will remove all your data. You have been warned.

In order to unlock the bootloader, you will need to enable the developer settings on your phone. This is done by going to Settings -> About the Phone there you should see the Android build version and you should start tapping on it. Once you have tapped enough times, your phone will enable Developer Options in the phone settings. Go there, and enable USB debugging and OEM Unlocking.

Download and install Android Platform Tools for your operating system. Open a terminal, on Windows you can do this by searching for cmd.exe in the start menu. Locate the folder that contains fastboot or (fastboot.exe on Windows). This file was included as a part of the Android Platform Tools you downloaded earlier. Once you have done this, run the following in the terminal (replace the path with the path of fastboot on your machine:

cd Downloads/platform-tools

Connect Nokia 3.2 to your computer with a USB cable. And run on the terminal:

On Windows run: fastboot.exe flashing unlock

On Mac/Linux: ./fastboot flashing unlock

If this does not work, you may need to run the following before running fastboot

On Windows (skip if unlock worked): adb.exe reboot bootloader 

On Mac/Linux (skip if unlock worked): ./adb reboot bootloader 

Your phone should reboot and ask for a confirmation. After that it will do a factory reset and unlock the bootloader.

Extract the Boot partition

This is the only part of the process that is phone specific. You will need to repeat the process above for enabling developer options and USB debugging again, and then run TWRP on your phone. You will need either an SD card in your phone or a micro-USB stick that supports OTG.

Download the TWRP image for Nokia 3.2 and place it in the same folder as fastboot. Connect your phone to your computer with a USB cable and run:

Windows: fastboot.exe boot self_bootingTWRP.img

Mac and Linux: ./fastboot boot self_bootingTWRP.img

This will boot your phone to TWRP. Don't worry, nothing will be flashed to your phone, so TWRP is gone as soon as you reboot.

In the TWRP interface, you need to go to backup. Make sure you only select boot in the list of partitions to backup. And back it up to your SD card or USB stick. This will create a TWRP folder and place the backup inside of it. Reboot your phone once you are done.

The good thing in this method is that you do not need to rely on some random pre-patched boot images from different websites that may or may not be compatible with your firmware/hardware. When you extract the boot image from your phone by yourself, you can be sure it is 100% compatible with your device and Android version. ☺️

Patch the Boot Image with Magisk

We have gone through a lot in this tutorial already, but now we are finally about to root Nokia 3.2! For this, we will need some magic. Use your phone to navigate to https://magiskroot.net/ once you are there, download and install the latest version of Magisk Manager on your phone.

When you ran TWRP backup in the previous step, it created a file called boot.emmc.win on your SD card or USB stick. Locate that file, you will need to open it on Magisk Manager.

Run Magisk Manager and select Install -> Install -> Select and Patch a File. Open the boot.emmc.win file TWRP created and Magisk should start automatically patching it. Once the process is done, it will save it to [Internal Storage]/Download/magisk_patched.img.

Move the patched file to your SD card/USB stick, and repeat the process of booting your phone to TWRP.

Select Install in TWRP, go to Images… Locate the magisk_patched.img file. Make sure you flash it to boot partition. Once the process is done, your phone will reboot and be rooted!

NB. If you are cautious and do not feel like rooting your phone before you know the patched boot image actually works, you can copy magisk_patched.img to your PC and place it in the same folder as fastboot. Then it is possible to boot to this image in the same way as you were able to boot to TWRP. By running fastboot boot magisk_patched.img

That's it! Done and done! Go and enjoy your rooted phone! 😁