The tool is legal to own for repairing your own hardware. However, using it to bypass FRP on a stolen device is illegal in most jurisdictions. You should only use the IMEI repair feature to restore your device’s original IMEI (printed on the box), never to change it to a different number.
The developers behind the New Lenovo U1 Tool have announced a roadmap for Q4 2025:
The Lenovo U1 Tool (often labeled U1_ProTool, U1_Engineer_V3, or U1_New) is a proprietary, low-level flashing and repair software primarily designed for Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Lenovo and Motorola devices. Unlike standard fastboot or RSA (Rescue and Smart Assistant), the "New U1" tool operates in Emergency Download (EDL) Mode (9008) , allowing direct memory access to eMMC/UFS storage. It is the industry standard for unbricking hard-bricked devices, rewriting corrupted IMEI/SN, restoring factory firmware after a preloader corruption, and bypassing certain FRP (Factory Reset Protection) locks on older firmware. lenovo u1 tool new
Do not use U1 New as a daily flashing tool. Reserve it for:
Always keep a backup of persist, modemst1, and modemst2 partitions before any write operation. Without these, even U1 cannot restore your device's unique radio calibration. The tool is legal to own for repairing your own hardware
Need a specific partition map or loader file for a particular Lenovo/Motorola model? Provide the device codename (e.g., "nio", "dubai") and the exact HWID from Device Manager.
Before you start: You will need a Windows PC (Windows 10 or 11 recommended), a USB-A to USB-C data cable (not a charging-only cable), and the MediaTek USB VCOM drivers. The developers behind the New Lenovo U1 Tool
Lenovo is gradually moving to EDL authorization via OAUTH tokens, similar to Xiaomi's authorized MiFlash. The "New" U1 tool may become deprecated for post-2025 devices, replaced by Lenovo Software Fix (LSF) which requires device authentication via a signed Samsung account. However, for legacy and mid-range Snapdragon devices, U1 New remains the most powerful unbrick tool available.