[Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Guides, News, & Discussion] dwl99:
[For Redmi Note 3 Special Edition (Snapdragon CPU) only]

I've put this noob-friendly guide together to help anyone who wants to use Cyanogenmod 13 (Android 6.0) on their Redmi Note 3 Special Edition.

This can now be done without unlocking the bootloader which avoids a whole world of hassle. It involves flashing an official MIUI developer ROM which has had the stock recovery replaced by a custom recovery (Alka TWRP). You can then use the custom recovery to wipe MIUI and flash Cyanogenmod (or any other ROM you want to try). I have done this to my own phone and encountered no problems but I accept no responsibility in the unlikely event of your bricking your phone! The MIUI developer ROM in the link is one in which I have already replaced the stock recovery with Alka TWRP and uploaded to Mediafire. If you prefer to download the developer ROM from the official website and replace the stock recovery yourself that's fine. The Cyanogenmod ROM is actually for Kenzo so you will need to flash a firmware zip file to make it all work.

1. Download & install this version of Miflash.

2. Download the modded developer firmware containing the custom recovery and unzip it. Also download files to make the fingerprint reader etc work and the radio firmware here and Cyanogenmod 13 (use the snapshot dated 2016-08-20 04:06:46) and Open Gapps ARM64 6.0 nano but do not unzip them. Copy the last 3 zipped files to an external SD card and insert it in the phone. If your SD card is 32GB or bigger it will need to be formatted as FAT32 before Alka TWRP will recognise it. I found this utility to be very good at doing this but be

very

careful that you select the correct drive letter when using it.

3. Start your phone up and enable USB debugging.

4. Download and install minimal adb & fastboot.

5. Start up your phone (with the external SD card inserted) and connect it by USB to your PC. Run minimal adb on your PC, type adb devices and Enter, look for a popup box on your phone asking for permissions & accept it.

6. Type adb reboot edl and Enter, the phone will boot into edl mode with a blank screen.

7. Start up Miflash and point it to the unzipped modded firmware folder then flash it - takes around 400 sec.

8. Disconnect the phone, press Power and Vol Up to boot into TWRP recovery. When you boot into TWRP for the first time you will see that it's all in Chinese. Just tap on the second bottom button on the right then tap on the globe icon and select English as the language. Then you need to tap on the oblong button on the bottom right of the screen to save it. If at any time TWRP asks you to allow it to stop itself being replaced by stock recovery just agree to it.

9. *IMPORTANT* back up ALL partitions to the external SD card using TWRP. Later on, copy this backup to your PC and keep it safe. It's your insurance policy against any disasters such as losing your IMEI. Then boot into MIUI and wait for it to load (might take a while).

10. Once MIUI has loaded, shut down the phone then press Power and Vol Up to boot into TWRP recovery. Do a full wipe and then flash the CM13 ROM then the firmware + radio update then Gapps. Then boot into your new firmware!

11. Make sure you disable LiveDisplay in Settings or you will get screen flickering issues.