[Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro Guides, News, & Discussion] yo-less:
I've been trying to find a new stable ROM these last few days as removing AOSiP and restoring my phone to factory state has actually brought my screen back to life and has ended all flickering and other issues, so I was free to do some more experimenting (Also, I would maybe not recommend using AOSiP any longer, even though my screen problems could, of course, have been completely unrelated to the custom ROM - but it is possible that a GSI ROM could mess with a phone's hardware as it isn't specifically tailored to the phone it runs on).

So I tried ArrowOS for some days and really liked what I saw. However, there was one major flaw that made me abandon it again: It was impossible to keep USB debugging enabled and that's a vital option as anyone who's ever had a dead or non-responsive screen will be able to tell you. If you have USB debugging , you can use an app like Vysor to remotely see and control your screen from your PC. However, there is absolutely no way to enable USB debugging remotely. If you can't use your screen, it stays disabled. It can't be enabled remotely or from TWRP, which, I guess, is good from a security perspective but devestating if you can't access any of your data any more because you also can't really get into TWRP once you've set a PIN and can't see the screen any longer. So I had to let go of ArrowOS, even though it has a great SystemUI (black mode, love it) and seemed pretty stable.

Having said that, the only other option that I hadn't extensively fiddled around with yet, was plain good vanilla AOSP. And, honestly, I think I've become a real fan. Basically, AOSP is what all custom ROMs are build on and that means it's free for you to customize. Obviously, without coding skills you can only go so far. BUT: Using EdXposed, Substratum and Magisk, there is really a lot you can change to make it work the way you want - Honestly, I can hardly tell the difference between the more feature-rich custom ROM and AOSP. Also, the latest AOSP is really stable as far as I can tell after a few days.

I had also briefly resorted to using MIUI as I really like the way it looks and behaves. But it's bloatware heaven and I might as well just send my harddisk with all my personal data to Xiaomi directly. I had also tried to remove most of the bloatware, but some apps couldn't be removed at all (Like the "Themes" app, for example), so I went back to try and get AOSP to look the way I like my Android.

And what can I say? For the first time since I bought my Mi 8 Pro, I actually feel like I have the phone I wanted: Fast, customized to my liking and with no excess baggage. Also, as nice as custom ROMs are - they usually come with some bugs that can often hardly be avoided - if the system you run has very few features already included, you can choose which bugs you want to add yourself :D.

The trade-off is: I don't have a working fingerprint sensor and VoLTE isn't working either but if I have to choose between a powerful phone that has flashy features, collects all of my data and is bloated to the max and a powerful phone that is missing some features, has only what I think is important and might be missing some nice-to-have features, I sure as hell will go with the latter.