[Xiaomi Redmi 4X Real Life Review] _giddyup:
I've tried several AOSP based ROMs for about 6 months on this device and I can give my two cents about the development scene.

Mind that, of course, it's all volunteer work and I'm not bashing anyone. I'm just telling my experience as an end user.

1) Lately, most Santoni developers migrated their ROMs to Treble only. This means a couple of things.

- Instead of continuing to use official TWRP and plain Magisk, you'll now have to use an unofficial recovery (because TWRP official doesn't support treble for our device) and a modded version of Magisk.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather put something signed by a recognized developer on my phone, such as the people from TWRP and the Magisk dev, than a random "modded" ZIP from the web. Not only for security, but because it is less prone to bugs. Agree with me?

Yet, the former is now the installation process for most Santoni ROMs.

- If you were lucky enough to use one of those ROMs before the Treble migration, you now have to nuke everything on your phone just to update your system to the Treble version. Fun, right?

You found THE ROM for your phone, and now you're nuking everything again.

- Despite the above mess, I can't say any advantage of using Treble on this device, besides being able to flash GSIs. But flashing GSI means you didn't bother with the original ROM anyway. So why are most ROMs Treble only? It seems just a trendy thing with more inconveniences than benefits for our device.

- Also, some people report the treble ROMs are more buggy. Lose-lose situation?

2) Right now we have many ROMs for Santoni. But when you go choose, you see that many are abandoned and most of the rest are Treble, with the "hacky" installation method.

3) On that mess, you may still find a ROM that suits you and your Santoni. You'll settle, adapt to its bugs or even find some workarounds. Great, right? But after a couple of months the developer can (and most will) completely abandon it, leaving you having to find another ROM to keep updated.

Or he won't abandon it, but he'll decide to switch to Treble only. Oh boy.

So there you go, nuke your whole phone again and start from zero.

Both situations happened even to ROMs with official status.

4) Many ROMs updates will come with the suggestion of "clean flashing". Now, I know this isn't strictly necessary, but in some situations dirty flashing can really cause bugs.

So, good luck reinstalling everything just to update your system. Even with some tool such as TitaniumBackup, it's a tedious process. Even more when you're expected to do it every few weeks.

5) Many ROMs have an erratic update schedule. On Monday the dev ships an update, and you flash it. But on Tuesday he sees he screwed everything because of not testing properly before shipping, and there you are, having to flash a new update. (I hope you didn't do a clean flash yesterday!)

Even when the updates aren't so close to each other, most ROMs have an almost random release schedule.

6) Now this I think is not exclusive to this device, but most ROMs won't notify you when there is an update. You'll have to keep an eye on a Telegram channel or here in the forum, as if you didn't have a life.

Even when they notify you, the update process is manual.

7) There are some bugs I always find on most Santoni Oreo ROMs and after half a year they are still there.

For example, I found video recording to be terrible in every custom ROM I've tried (I've tried most). Bad auto-focus, bad audio, etc. It doesn't matter which camera app you use. Yet it is still there.

Also, voice recording can be extremely quiet on some ROMs (luckly I've found a way to fix it).

Not to mention the battery drain, present everywhere (for which I only found a workaround - not a solution).

So the impression is that the effort is going to the trendy things (Treble) instead of fixing the existing bugs. The months pass and we have the same bugs, or even new ones.

8) Feedback about bug reporting can be non-existent or dismissive.

You report the problem and some developers won't bother. Others will say the problem doesn't even exist.

In a nutshell, there are many AOSP based ROMs for Santoni, but the development isn't as reliable as it could be. The general feeling is that it's too erratic and amateurish. Old bugs are not solved; new ones are introduced; the installation process is made worse for no apparent reason; you are forced to lose many hours reconfiguring your device just to keep it up to date. Also, I have seen no intention to mimic/pre-load some features we have on MIUI.

However, despite all the negatives points I offered, I can't compare the dev scene to other devices. Does Santoni has a better dev scene than some other phones? Probably.

For me, right now, I don't find those ROMs to be worth it. Life is short, and I'm back to MIUI. I'm using Xiaomi.eu, and I'm very pleased in comparison.