[Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE] zgfg:
My thoughts about rooting stock MIUI on Xiaomi 11 Lite 5g NE (Lisa)

This week I'm still waiting for Bootloader, but checking about the possibilities.

Coming from Xiaomi Mi 9T (Davinci) – I owned the phone for 2+ years, used stock EEA first, then switched to Xiaomi.eu Weeklies and finally to Xiaomi.eu Stable.

Trough the time, I went from A9/MIUI 10 to A11/MIUI 12.5, and in parallel I experimented with all relevant Magisk version (Stable, Beta, Canary, Lite, Alpha and Custom Magisk) – curently I'm on Magisk Alpha 23018 (with Zygisk, DenyList, Shamiko – no more the old MagiskHide).

Through all that, I used my Davinci as daily driver, for private and business, and I never had any bigger issues. I hope for the similar experience with my new Lisa.

As you can see, I'm not a fan of custom ROMs (altough I experimented with some of them on my previous devices), hence I also plan for Lisa, at least for now, to stay on MIUI.

Stock MIUI:

1.AFAIK, there are two unofficial custom recoveries but they don't support A12 encryption on /Data and Internal memory, hence they are of limited use for rooting.

They can be used for ADB sideloading and probably with OTG stick and external SD card.

But they cannot install/flash from Internal memory, backup/restore to Internal memory, and generally they cannot backup /Data – specially, TWRP cannot be used for fixing /adb/data in case of magisk bootloops.

2.However, for the installation of Magisk, TWRP is NOT REQUIRED – although by (1), TWRP could be still used for e.g. flashing the Magisk zip from OTG stick.

3.Magisk can be alternatively installed by: installing Magisk app (no root yet), patching the extracted boot.img (in Magisk app), and flashing the patched boot img from Fastboot (therefore, by completely bypassing TWRP).

My Lisa came with EEA 12.5.7 and it was immediately updated to 12.5.8, hence I have downloaded the stock miui_LISAEEAGlobal_V12.5.8.0.RKOEUXM_700eb7116a_11.0.zip and unzipped – but unlike for e.g. Mi 9 series, the OTA package does not contain separated boot.img (192 MB).

Instead, it contains 13.2 GB payload.bin (SAR, Dynamic partitions, all in once) and when I tried, Magisk cannot patch, reporting that format is not supported.

4. There are still some other ways to install Magisk. Maybe, by backing up Boot to OTG stick / external SD card – the backed up boot.emmc.win file can be used as the boot img for patching.

Or by flashing the Magisk zip through TWR (from external SD /OTG) – but that might be risky in case of a brick, fixing may not be easy.

Xiaomi.eu:

Xiaomi.eu ROMs are essentially debloated MIUI. Usually they are even bette, specially if staying on Xiaomi.eu Stable releases (Weekly releases are essentially betas).

Since I was accustomed to Xiaomi.eu on my Davinci, I also planned to switch to Xiaomi.eu on my Lisa.

Currently, they have Stable 12.5.7 (A11), while Weeklies with MIUI 13 / A12 are around the corner (they will start once Xiaomi starts releasing MIUI 13 weekly Betas for Lisa)

5. Hence I have downloaded xiaomi.eu_multi_MI11LE_XM11Lite5GNE_V12.5.7.0.RKOCNXM_v12-11-fastboot.zip. Since there is no TWRP for Lisa, Xiaomi.eu ROM must be installed through Fastboot (unzip and run the batch script windows_fastboot_first_install_with_data_format.bat).

The zip file contains the boot.img and I just tried, Magisk (Alpha) can succesfuly patch – the patched img needs to be flashed from Fastboot to Boot (I cannot proceed for now since still waiting for BL to be unlocked).

If anything goes wrong, it will be just enough to flash the original Xiaomi.eu boot.img.

I already used the same procedure for installing Magisk to Davinci, however I used then TWRP/OF/SHRP (not Fastboot) to flash the patched boot img directly from the couche and the phone – this could even apply to Lisa, if placing the patched boot img to external SD or OTG stock.

Please correct me and/or comment about the other posssbilites about installing Magisk to MIUI on Lisa, specially with your results if you already tried.