[Redmi Note 8 Pro Guides, News, & Discussion] Sapphiress:
I've posted this review on the c.mi forums, There isn't anywhere in the review section that I can find to post a full review so I'm posting it in discussion, mods feel free to move it if there is a better category.

But, I felt someone in the same situation as me that bought this phone to get [back] into android development might find this useful.

Hello all, After having a Redmi Note 8 Pro and using it as my daily driver for a little over a month, I've decided it's time for me to write a review.

First, I'll give you all a little background on me, I'm a developer of everything from webpages to hardware, and tech enthusiast of all kinds. I'm from the US(NA market) so my knowledge of the Indian and Chinese markets are a bit limited although I do know pretty much how the EU market works as they're normally marketed to the almost the same way as the NA market, at least when it comes to tech. I started developing for Android with my Google G1 way back in 2008 and have been on an off developing for different android phones since then on a variety of forums. From the now gone SDX-Developers to XDA and Android Forums.(Through many different accounts as everywhere but SDX seems to end with me getting in an argument and deleting my account.) This is my first Xiaomi phone. I will be giving a review both as a user and a developer.

Marketing:

In the NA market this phone is marketed as a budget flagship, or "flagship killer" if you will. Pushed mostly towards tech enthusiasts and developers.

Their marketing technique is very similar to that of OnePlus, however without the strong reputation behind it that OnePlus has. If Xiaomi wants to continue using this marketing technique here they have a lot of make up for, and a lot of work to do for reasons that will become apparent later in this review.

User Review:

As a user I'm moderately happy with my purchase, the phone itself feels quality and is beautiful(I have the pearl white one). The price was decent, costing me $225 USD for the 64GB/6GB version. The processor is quick and the UI is gorgeous and snappy. The screen has really nice Darks and the HDR implementation is really good looking....When it works(Fixed in the new A10/M11 release). However, the software is really buggy with MIUI optimizations turned on, which is a shame because they make quite a difference to the snappiness and feel of the device. Apps sometimes don't work properly, refuse to show in portrait mode, or just won't use the keyboard(such as the newegg app which I use to order hardware quite often). There are a significant lack of updates, having just now as of today(28th May 2020) recieved my first OTA(Which is useless to me, more on that later). This has been a problem that the community seems quite aware and little angry about for good reason, seeing as how my device is still on the Dec 2019 security patch, with multiple high-threat CVEs being released since then. The IR blaster is nice, but the Mi Remote app needs a lot of work. I remember it being much, much better when it was "Peel Smart Remote" and using it on my Samsung Galaxy S5. The gallery app misses most downloaded pictures, and is quite the pain to get working. This is a shame as it's the only way to change the lock screen background, other than the theme app. -1 point for broken DRM and bugs -2 points for lack of updates.

Oh I forgot there are Ads throughout the system. This is UNACCEPTABLE in the NA and EU markets, to date this is the only phone I HAVE EVER SEEN put ads in the system framwork. I have owned at least 150 different android phones. This is becoming more and more forced by tech companies throughout different devices, specifically Chinese oriented ones and will not fly for long in Western Markets(especially the EU which already limits advertising). We paid for our hardware, you've got your money, now it's just being greedy, intrusive, and posing a risk to device security. (e.g The "security" app that puts ads in your package installer) It's easy enough to disable, but not everyone is going to know how, or want to do that. -2 points just for the ads, and honestly should be more taken off, the quality of the hardware is what's stopping me from dropping it -4 points.

Overall User Rating: 5/10

Developer Review:

Let me start off by saying, once again, that in the NA market this phone is marketed as an Unlocked device for enthusiasts, or a budget flagship(Which personally I have seen very little of this advertising for) It's on the front page of the XDA forums. Rooting and development is an important part of the Android Community, in what I've seen ALL MARKETS globally. We will begin at the rooting process. Unlocking the bootloader comes with a wait time. This is due to unauthorized retailers flashing chinese and indian varients to global and selling them, filled with [more] ads. So the fact that there is a 168 hour wait time to unlock the bootloader is completely understandable and I will take away no points for that. They're protecting their reputation in the least intrusive way they could, you know what? I'll even give them an extra point for the way they handled that part, +1. Now let's go to install TWRP, where right on the website is says "WARNING: This device hard bricks really easily for unknown reasons. Restoring device without spending real money is impossible as of now. " -2 points. This should have been my first warning to buy a different device. A somewhat large, reputable, and rooting advocate development team is warning users not to use their product, that's a red flag, and should never be something you have associated with your device or company as a whole. TWRP has backlight bug which can be fixed with an adb command, and really isn't a big deal seeing as how TWRP probably went through multiple devices getting their recovery out. Then flash Magisk. That's it you're rooted. I have to give them a hand, rooting really isn't a big deal. But let's pretend we're a new user and accidentally flashed TWRP to the boot partition, well you're SOL now, you have a $225 brick. There is no coming back from this unless 1, You have an authorized MI account, which you almost certainly do not. or 2, you pay some sketchy person halfway across the world to RDP into your computer and use their authorized account to unbrick you, as well as the 80% chance they're going to drop a keylogger, ransomware or they're going to syskey your computer and now you're still SOL, but you might have your phone unbricked, not very useful without a computer and an empty bank account though. They handled the way unbricking works terribly, and without cause. -8 points To add salt on the wound they release the source code like they're doing the development community a favor when it's 100% useless without a reliable unbricking method. -2 points for putting on a show. Which is sad, because otherwise the phone would be a pleasure to develop for. For example, you're in a bootloop something in /system got messed up. You can just flash the system.img from twrp and recover without any data loss or bloatware reappearing. That's amazing! the phone is partitioned very well, and has lots of xml, props and stuff to tweak from the start. Also, a really cute fastboot screen as a plus. Unfortunately, Xiaomi.eu has dropped all support for this device, as well as any other MTK based phones.

Thankfully, some totally awesome person at Xiaomi "leaked" an engineering preloader which can help prevent bricks as long as it's not overwritten and you stay on android 9. But, the downside is, No Android 10, No MIUI 12, No anything other than MIUI 11 Pie. If they would release more lks along side the updates for developers this would be insanely helpful, and breath some life back into the RN8P/8/T development community.

Still, as a developer, and a normal person, I'm afraid to do too much to this device, or develop kernels, recoveries or ROMS because i'm terrified I'm going to be out $225 and my daily driver phone, that I can't afford to replace if something bad happens.

Development Score: 0/11

Guy who leaked preloader score: 10000/10

tl;dr If you're not into rooting or development this is a pretty decent phone with quality flagship hardware, if you can live with ads in your system, and the bug in some apps. There are ways to remove most of the ads without root, and it does still get updates, although rare. It's worth $180-$200 USD if you find it for a good deal. Although you could just get a used OnePlus 7 Pro for around the same price maybe $50-$100 USD more(depending on market) and be much happier all around.