[Redmi Note 8 Guides, News, & Discussion] mara91:
Hi all, after lots of trial & error, I would like to share how I managed to unbrick my Redmi Note 8

original thread: https://xdaforums.com/t/need-redmi-note-8-firehose-without-authentication.4031513/

many thanks to dxD7 who provided valuable info on how this worked for him

WARNING: this process requires you to enter EDL mode which means you have to separate backplate and short 2 pins on motherboard so USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! since its not quick&easy solution yet.. thanks Xiaomi! (n)

Symptoms:

while pressing power button , the display backlight will turn on for approx a second and phone will vibrate and then turn off

while pressing power+volume- button, the phone will do the same as above but will show fastboot image for a second too

while phone is connected via cable its backlight will turn on for a second and thend turn off repeatedly..

tested on ginko, batch 2020.11 - but should work on other (older phones as well) not tested on 8T-willow but might work - some mention about it is in original thread

note that there is different kind of brick where after turning on the phone only the LED light blinks - it wasn't tested on that situtation but you can try it and pls let me know.

What you will need

clean windows without any previous ROM-flashing or android development drivers is recommended as it looks like windows is unable to fully uninstall previous drivers - they will reappear once device is connected

download xiaomi flash tool 20200314 from https://xiaomiflashtool.com/download/xiaomi-flash-tool-20200314

download QPST v2.7.480 from https://forum.hovatek.com/thread-22467.html

download fastboot ROM named ginkgo_global_images_V11.0.12.0.PCOMIXM_20201119.0000.00_9.0_global_37804edbcb.tgz from https://bigota.d.miui.com/V11.0.11....XM_20201001.0000.00_9.0_global_389eff34c9.tgz

prog_emmc_firehose_Sm6125_ddr.zip from attachment

STEPS:

unpack ROM (for example to Desktop)

unpack prog_emmc_firehose_Sm6125_ddr.zip and place prog_emmc_firehose_Sm6125_ddr.elf from .zip into your unpacked ROM folder: /ginkgo_global_images_V11.0.11.0.PCOMIXM_20201001.0000.00_9.0_global/images/prog_emmc_firehose_Sm6125_ddr.elf (overwrite the old one)

run QFIL.exe and set it up similiarly like in this video (i know it's for 8T and but same principle is applicable here)

leave QFIL.exe running, you will need it later

now the tricky part. remove backlplate, connect phone using USB cable (prefferably stock cable that came with the phone and into USB2 slot) and short these 2 pins to get into EDL mode View attachment 5209521

you should hear windows sound of device plugged in. check in the device manager - it should report as unknown device QUSB_BULK_CID:XXXX_SN:XXXXXXXX

now run xiaomi flash tool 20200314 and it will prompt to install drivers so click Install and check if your unknown device now reports as QUALCOMM HS-USB QDLoader 9008 (if install process happended too fast and you cannot see the driver (this happened to me) please remove anything from MiFlash20200314\log folder and try again)

once the driver is installed, QFIL should show QUALCOMM HS-USB QDLoader 9008 instead of No Port Available

click on Download Content to flash firmware

now my 1st flash failed - I got Sahara Error, so I disconnected the cable, pressed all 3 buttons on phone for ~10seconds until screen blinked and phone vibrated

I connected cable again, shorted these 2 pins to get into EDL mode, pressed Download content again and now it worked (took few minutes) and Download Succeed

hold all 3 buttons for ~10seconds and phone should start up

to my knowledge the error you will get the most in QFIL is Sahara Fail. according to the internet, this might be due to many reasons (bad cable, bad usb port, antivirus running, wrong firmware or firehose or wrong driver but in my case it was the wrong driver - internet is full of various qualcomm driver but I had succes only with the one included in xiaomi flash tool 20200314 ) for more troubleshooting please use for example https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usbdeview.zip check if your driver's version is same as on the attached image (2.1.0.5)

View attachment 5209555

No reboot nor enabling unsigned drivers, running QFIL as administrator, disabling antivirus was needed in my case.

Maybe some of these steps are unnecesarry, maybe this guide can be written more understandably - sorry for that - i wrote is asap so I won't forget anything I did during process. Please feel free to modify it or I will try to improve it in the future if I brick my phone again and have more knowledge about it..

and I also need to figure out how to stick backplate to phone again so that it can be removed if needed while still preserving some kind of waterproof function..

EDIT: bricked my phone 3 more times aftrer trying to install RR but was able to recover from all of them again

UPDATE:

user Elinx stated that this happens only with 11-2020 batch and flashing FW 12.01 with recovery. So let's hope it won't happen on other batches..

It is also mentioned here (hope it helps):

see in this topic

and here too