[Xiaomi Redmi 8 Guides, News, & Discussion] fonzacus:
YOUR WARRANTY IS VOID IF YOU CONTINUE

A noob friendly guide on how to get the most out of your phone. The Xiaomi Redmi 8 has been touted as one of the most sold phone during the release alongside the Note 8. As of mid 2021, there have been a rise of actively developed kernels, recoveries, and finally custom ROMs. There were only a select few before, and may be dormant now. While the Xiaomi.eu custom may be enough for some, others may want a more different approach.

DRIVER

Windows

Generic "Universal ADB Fastboot" drivers are multipurpose drivers that support a wide range of device drivers using ADB and Fastboot. It may be a better idea to also install Xiaomi specific drivers if you also want to enable "USB Mode" as well.

Required drivers may be installed automatically via "Device Manager", selecting the device, then updating the driver. Windows 10 automatically installs required drivers for ADB, and USB Mode drivers on first connection.

Linux

Most mainstream distributions have them in their official repository. Searching for "android driver" usually includes ADB/Fastboot. USB Mode drivers can also be found by searching for "mtp" which usually has FUSE support builtin to the Linux kernel.

FIRMWARE

The official site for Xiaomi firmware usually only shows the latest drivers, and is hard to find more specific versions. The unofficial site does also include many archive versions. Although it is not required, it is more recommended to use what your phone shipped with. For example, my phone (global indo) came with PCNIDXM 11.0.2.0, and I will use the last A9 11.0.7.0 release. I prefer using the latest release, as A10 does not have the last release status yet, I chose to stay with A9. You may try upgrading your OS to A10 (A11 might also be released for our phone), but beware of "Android Anti Rollback" and always use an upgraded/higher firmware.

As it turns out, many members in the group have said that ARB is not active on our devices. It may be wise to stick with your region firmware and not another region to ensure compatibility.

BOOTLOADER

ALL DATA WILL BE ERASED. If you need to take backups, do it before starting. Copying backups to another device (phone or PC) is more reliable than an external SD card.

Requirements

3 days account age

7 days of usage

Enable "Developer Option"

Settings > About Phone > Build Number > Tap 7 times

Settings > Additional Settings > Developer Option

Enable both "USB Debugging" and "OEM Unlock"

Mi Account link

Xiaomi Unlock https://en.miui.com/unlock

Xiaomi Cloud https://i.mi.com

Find your device, it may help as the unlock tool has been buggy

Launch the unlock tool with admin rights

(optional) upgrade both the app and driver via the menu icon

Follow the instructions

You may require both SMS and data quota available in SIM 1 (the middle slot)

Turn off your phone, then turn it on with POWER + VOLUMN DOWN to boot into Fastboot mode

Start the unlock

A successful unlock shows an "(unlock icon) Unlocked" upon booting before the boot animation. It may show an unsuccessful unlock, but once your phone reboots, it may turn out to be unlocked. Your phone will reset to factory defaults.

FLASHING

It is not required to add ADB tools under your system's path. It does make future usage easier, and you also learn how to use computers, and is beneficial in the long run. Binaries and libraries are linked together. Simply copying the platform tools folder to another place, or vice versa, and launching the tools should be safe.

FIRMWARE FASTBOOT

Flashing an entire firmware is more safely done while in Fastboot mode. While there are also recovery archives, they do not include the entire partition library for a full clean install. There is also a risk of hitting an ARB http://xda-developers.com/xiaomi-anti-rollback-protection-brick-phone. There are GUI tools available, but they are very prone to bugs, and may not work well compared to simple CLI. Fastboot images also include "flash_all..." for both Windows (.bat) and Linux (.sh). To ensure better results, make sure the extracted path is short and has no unique characters (such as spaces) in the names. On Windows, it is preferable to use "Command Prompt" instead of "Powershell" as the latter is not as stable. Running the preferred terminal as admin/root is also a favorable.

Most users require an unofficial "vbmeta" patch to bypass "Android Verified Boot" for more advanced usage. The attached vbmeta bypasses builtin blocking.

fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta vbmeta.img

RECOVERY TWRP

TWRP is a general purpose recovery without too many features. It is much better than every stock recovery, but may have less features than the newer recovery projects. As a starting point, many other recoveries require having at least a custom recovery installed. While it is possible to Fastboot install other recoveries by extracting the archive, flashing the image, then copying over the default configs. This should not be relied upon as there may be additional scripts that are required to safely install other custom recoveries.

The official documentation for Fastboot states that not every phone supports 'fastboot reboot MODE', our phone does. We can safely append recovery to reboot into recovery mode from Fastboot, and expect it to work without rapidly trying to enter recovery mode via hardware buttons.

fastboot reboot recovery

ROOT MAGISK

It is recommended to backup the boot partition with TWRP. If you are using a custom ROM, a boot.img is inside the archive.

It is safe to flash magisk directly using TWRP. We should download the APK, rename it to ZIP, reboot to recovery and install, once it is done installing, rename it again to APK, boot to system and install it normally. Since our device qualifies as an exception, the boot partition is flashed instead of the recovery when reading the installation guide.

KERNEL

Other than the LOLZ kernel available here, there are a few additional kernels available in the Telegram chat group. I will try to provide more information later.

GAPPS

Like it or not, Google is here to stay. With so many GAPPs variants (respective packages, and addons), which should we choose? There might not be a correct answer as they are always evolving. The only thing most users MUST care about, is whether or not their recent changelog may include major stability issues such as 'fixed bootloop' and decide for themselves.

Most of the time, it should be more preferred to choose the core installer, then manually installing from there, YOUR required additional GAPPs (either via addons or the store). Fewer cars do mean fewer pileups, and not having too many apps installed will also cause less headaches.

ROM

The meat of the guide, and what most people seek when searching around the XDA. There are two main groups of ROMs, Generic System Image (GSI), and full custom ROMs specifically built for a device. Many devices may share common drivers with each other, such as the Redmi 8 series and the 8A. While not going too in-depth on a particular selection, one should take note and at least read through the installation instructions. Typically on modern A11 ROMs, most follow similar steps as followed;

reboot recovery

format data

reboot recovery

wipe cache, dalvik, data, system (sometimes vendor and internal)

reboot recovery

install archives

some may have a different step which are required for it to install. If one were to follow another guide for another phone, and ask for support on your phone's ROM thread, welp.

GSI builds have been around since A9 with treble support, and might have been a great idea. It allows users to try out a ROM not available within their reach, or try a completely new system such as UBports. It works much like a PC OS installer, but with PC experience, most users are required to finish their installation with needed tweaks. Additional drivers, security patches, custom user services and so on are the many examples that can easily be installed with minimal PC experience. Phones also require device specific tweaks to get the most out of GSIs and may vastly differ from each other. I am not against GSIs in general, but do hope for major breakthroughs in the development.