[Amazfit] Bonegrindifier:
I live in China and bought an Amazfit Bip from Tmall. My googling had indicated that since ~2017 or 2018, the watch will switch languages into whatever the phone language was set to. So I bought one only to later find out this is no longer true in 2019. I contacted support, and they told me Amazfit Bips sold in China are unable to change the language, even just to English. What? When did that change? How come all these people who bought it before me were able to change the language so easily? I was angry.

Even Amazfit's official online support page is not helpful with random dates splattered around confusing me even more as to if this is changeable or not. Trying to find a way to do it only made me find either outdated procedures from 2016, or people in 2019 asking how to do it, with no answer!

So after a lot of research and trial and error, I finally managed to change the Chinese Bip into an International Bip with an English interface. So here is how I did it.

I am in no way responsible if you brick your Bip!! Flashing firmwares is always a risky procedure. You have been warned.

- Prerequisites:

An Amazfit Bip A1608 (Chinese version).

Make sure your Bip is paired with MiFit

Official Firmware v.1.1.5.04 stable

Gadgetbridge

Custom firmware from here or here

- Procedure:

1. Go to the Amazfit Bip settings page in MiFit and set the Discoverable setting to ON

2. Then scroll down to the end of the settings page and unpair your Bip from MiFit

3. Turn the Bip on and off again (The very last option in the watch's settings. Once tapped, tap yellow side for OK). Restart your phone too.

4. Download and install gadgetbridge from F-Droid. You can either just download or install the apk from that link, or install it directly from F-droid if you have it.

5. Turn on Airplane mode, and then turn Bluetooth and Location services back on.

6. Open gadgetbridge, and pair your Bip.

7. Take the official firmware you downloaded from here: Firmware v.1.1.5.04 stable for the Bip. We need this to downgrade the Bip to an older firmware to flash the "hacked" firmware that changes the Bip from the Chinese to International version.

8. Unzip the Firmware v.1.1.5.04 somewhere on your phone.

9. Open a file explorer and open the folder where you extracted the files. Tap to open Mili_chaohu.fw and it should give you the option to open it with gadgetbridge. Gadgetbridge will then give you the option to Flash it. Flash it, then repeat the same process for the other files in this order:

Mili_chaohu.ft

Mili_chaohu.res

Mili_chaohu.gps

Note: I used the non-latin files because I only need English and Chinese characters, so I don't know if the procedure works with the .latin files. If you do try it with the .latin versions and this all works properly, let me know!

10. Take the custom firmware you downloaded from here or here (that will convert your Bip into an international version) and extract it somewhere on your phone. Ignore the included gadgetbridge.apk

11. Click the 3 dots in gadgetbridge and check your HW ID.

- If your HW ID is : v0.11.1.4 then flash: "Mili_chaohu_CE_1.fw"

- If your HW ID is : v0.11.131.5 then flash: "Mili_chaohu_CE_131.fw"

Open the corresponding file in gadgetbridge like you did before and flash it

From my understanding, this procedure essentially changes the hardware ID in the firmware to the International ID.

12. Once flashed, go to your Bip's settings (on the watch) and perform a factory reset. This is the last setting on the second page of the settings (the second option from the bottom). Tap it, tap the yellow button for OK, then hold the side button for a bit to reset the watch. Your watch will then be reset.

13. Re-pair your watch to Gadgetbridge. Your watch should now be an International version, in English. You can now uninstall Gadgetbridge if you wish

14. Re-pair your watch to MiFit. It will upgrade the firmware fonts gps etc. to the latest version. Let it finish, and if everything went well, the Bip's interface will remain in English. Congratulations!

So this is how I did it. Some steps might be unnecessary, but I am not going to test them now that my watch is in English and works properly. It took a lot of trial and error and flashing until I figured out that the key was to downgrade the firmware to v.1.1.5.04 for it to work. Let me know if something was unnecessary when you did it.

Credit:

This post helped point me into the right direction, so thank you! The following posts were also helpful. Thanks!

This is the youtube video that gave out the files necessary to do this. Shout out to them for detailing the procedure and giving out the necessary files. Thank you!