Keeping Mi 8 alive after EOL [help wanted] - Xiaomi Mi 8 Questions & Answers

I'm thinking about maintaining my device after it reaches end of life. For example, giving it Android 1x based MIUI 1x in the future. (I'm thinking about XiaomiEU based ROMs)
However, I can't really find any help related to this (something that actually explains things, not just a follow-it-blindly-and-it-may-or-may-not-work general - and usually outdated - guide).
I'm comfortable with Linux and Git, and I have a very minimal understanding of Android (I mean with actual ROM development, otherwise I know the basics).
I'd appreciate some help.

Related

Sailfish OS for Nexus 6? (on multirom hopefully (so talking to you as well Tassadar))

I've looked into porting this myself based on the instructions provided from Jolla's website (found here https://sailfishos.org/develop/hadk/), it seems pretty straight forward. However apparently (according to Jolla) it cannot be done on a 32bit system even if I use Linux (which I do). I was wondering if anyone has entertained the thought of porting it, as there's a 2.0 version of the OS out now and I really want to try it. Kind of missing it from when I used to play around with it on my Nexus 5.
Conversely, if anyone knows a workaround to using a 32bit system, or if they have knowledge of it actually being possible on a 32bit system (could be Jolla is being overly cautious in requiring a 64bit system, but I believe it has something to do with working with MER), your advice would be forthcoming. Willing to put in the work, I just apparently don't have the tools according to Jolla and can't afford a new computer. My two Linux systems (one running Kubuntu, one running Backbox) are very capable. This is just the only prerequisite I don't meet.
As far as multirom, I'm curious if anything special has to be done besides the instructions from Jolla to make it compatible as a secondary rom at least.
Thanks in advance for all responses and patience. I may be a low contributor/noob to this site, but given the proper tools and advice I think I can pull it off. I haven't found anyone that's working on this for the Nexus 6, so if there is someone, obviously I'm willing to help or test.
Special note to Tassadar if you happen to see this: Multirom is the best thing that's happened to android since custom kernels. lol Big ups for your creation!
Awesome I hope more are interested too, I don't have resources to help either besides a test.
I can say that I have never been more impressed with a UI than the one I flashed on my n5 called Sailfish, Same as you I think.
To others of you have what's needed and haven't seen the ui please check it out. I thought it was minimal, sleek, and I believe it used mostly touch commands.
This thread is kinda in the wrong forum. Should be in q and a or general discussion.
But yes I would love to see this on my phone
First, don't post Q&A in development forums. Second, the first step in the guide states the device must be officially supported with CM 10.1.x, which this device isn't. Unless they just haven't updated their guide this will never be possible until it's updated to something based on Lollipop.
nuevosean said:
I've looked into porting this myself based on the instructions provided from Jolla's website (found here https://sailfishos.org/develop/hadk/), it seems pretty straight forward. However apparently (according to Jolla) it cannot be done on a 32bit system even if I use Linux (which I do). I was wondering if anyone has entertained the thought of porting it, as there's a 2.0 version of the OS out now and I really want to try it. Kind of missing it from when I used to play around with it on my Nexus 5.
Conversely, if anyone knows a workaround to using a 32bit system, or if they have knowledge of it actually being possible on a 32bit system (could be Jolla is being overly cautious in requiring a 64bit system, but I believe it has something to do with working with MER), your advice would be forthcoming. Willing to put in the work, I just apparently don't have the tools according to Jolla and can't afford a new computer. My two Linux systems (one running Kubuntu, one running Backbox) are very capable. This is just the only prerequisite I don't meet.
As far as multirom, I'm curious if anything special has to be done besides the instructions from Jolla to make it compatible as a secondary rom at least.
Thanks in advance for all responses and patience. I may be a low contributor/noob to this site, but given the proper tools and advice I think I can pull it off. I haven't found anyone that's working on this for the Nexus 6, so if there is someone, obviously I'm willing to help or test.
Special note to Tassadar if you happen to see this: Multirom is the best thing that's happened to android since custom kernels. lol Big ups for your creation!
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Click to collapse
Please read the Forum Rules on posting, Moved here...
FYI, android also has needed to be built on 64 bit only for several versions now. I think since Ice Cream Sandwich.. 32 bit just isn't cut out for it.
Sorry to raise this thread from the depths, but why haven't any devs pursued this?
I would love to try sailfish os on the nexus 6!
A $200 budget device was released just a few days ago in India that runs sailfish os natively, which is why i started looking into it for shamu.
Thought about picking one up, but the cellular bands aren't great for use in the U.S., and spec-wise doesn't hold a candle to shamu.
Through a little searching, it seems one person with the handle of mad_fitter on merproject irc attempted a port back in March, but never finished it afaict. Apparently, the fact that he had an intel chip prevented him from completing the final steps somehow...
This is an old post, but i love my phone and have dabbled with sailfish os before. If it could be ported that would be great and according to the the HADK documentation you can now use a cm 12.1 image instead of 10 to build it, whih was available for shamu. Someone could get the image from archive.org and use that. I have no experience with porting roms so i wouldn't be able to do it but if someone else could it would be great for the few of us that want it.
I would love to try this on my shamu, as well.
Has there been any development on this?

Purchasing decision

I need to get a new phone, but I don't have a lot of money, so I'm looking for something cheep (under $150) but that should support last a while (so should have a decent developer community around it).
So I'm thinking of either getting a athene or something from xiaomi, or waiting a bit until most phones come out with android > 8 and then get something cheep with Treble.
Now it's true that there are no guarantees when it comes to ROMs. A maintainer could get bored and move on, leaving an immensely popular device dry while a small niche device can have a dedicated maintainer for years. But my question is that since I'm not really a ROM dev (I know Java, C, and general Linux but don't know the inner bowels of Android) I don't know how difficult will it be to port future Android versions to current phones.
For example, according to the rumor mill, other ROMs are finding it extremely hard to port Oreo to klte or to s4 due to camera HAL issues. So based on the above, what would be the most reasonable way to proceed?
iamfoolish said:
I need to get a new phone, but I don't have a lot of money, so I'm looking for something cheep (under $150) but that should support last a while (so should have a decent developer community around it).
So I'm thinking of either getting a athene or something from xiaomi, or waiting a bit until most phones come out with android > 8 and then get something cheep with Treble.
Now it's true that there are no guarantees when it comes to ROMs. A maintainer could get bored and move on, leaving an immensely popular device dry while a small niche device can have a dedicated maintainer for years. But my question is that since I'm not really a ROM dev (I know Java, C, and general Linux but don't know the inner bowels of Android) I don't know how difficult will it be to port future Android versions to current phones.
For example, according to the rumor mill, other ROMs are finding it extremely hard to port Oreo to klte or to s4 due to camera HAL issues. So based on the above, what would be the most reasonable way to proceed?
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Athene ftw

Non EMUI Rom for Mate 20 PRO

(I have no permissions for ROMs sections so posting this here)
So it looks things are slowly moving , and we are able to unlock bootloader and root our devices.
User @auras76 was kind enough to bring as the first ROM available, but I guess I am not the only one looking forward to get rid of EMUI and its poor customisation layer
I hope once firm .173 hits general release we start getting more dev interest, but the goal of this thread is to find out if any dev could be potentially interested (or already planning) to work on a non-EMUI ROM
I can imagine a bounty could be organised for users to support financially this action.
What are everyone's thoughts on this?
Doubt you will see much development of any major Rom's if there is not a free way to unlock your bootloader as there just won't be that many unlocked devices
I am fully aware of that, however let´s hope that changes if/when .171 FW is generally available and allows bootloader unlock.
I just wanted to check if there would be a way to attract some devs here, even by supporting their work (purchasing a device? 10$ per person???)
If you like custom ROMs so much buy a One Plus phone. Lots of custom ROMs and every custom ROM has bugs. There is no build of any custom ROM that doesn't have bugs and sometimes the bugs on "stable" versions of custom ROMs are so serious they impact the basic functionality of the phone.
If you think I'm exaggerating pick a custom ROM for the OP5, 5T, OP6 or 6T and look at the last several pages of user posts.
They will be users reporting bugs-often very serious ones.
If you pick an OP5 or 5T ROM many will no longer be in development. The last several pages before the ROM was abandoned will be users still reporting bugs that will never get fixed.
And that is on phones that are supposedly very development friendly.
The days of custom ROMs that improve a phone's functionality, speed and stability over the stock ROM died with Nexus phones but if you want to run a custom ROM anyway buying this phone makes pretty much no sense because Huawei is not developer friendly. They don't want owners of Huawei phones to unlock their bootloaders or run custom ROMs on Huawei devices. The same is true for Xiaomi and Samsung phones.
For that matter Google, the company behind Nexus phones which were the most developed friendly phones anyone could buy no longer wants people to use custom ROMs which is why they came up with the ROM certification program and safety net.
Apps that help phone owners bypass safety net are automatically banned from the Play Store. Whatever method Magisk uses to bypass Safety Net gets plugged by Google forcing the developer to come up with a new method that will stop working when it also gets plugged by Google.
The developer behind SuperSu said the writing was on the wall for original Android development several years ago and he knew what he was talking about.
Well, I thought XDA was exactly the place where people "like custom ROMS" and tinker with their phones.
I am coming exactly from OP phone so I know how scene works there.
OP phones are dev-friendly but not many people try different ROMs as Oxygen is probably the smoothest implementation layer of all manufacturers, so there is no need other to change other than fun.
But we are not talking about OP but Huawei here, which is the opposite case. Lousy software implementation, from battery management (see the Powergenie issues threads), to Huawei bloatware, notification handling, little customisation allowed.... So Huawei is not like OP but more like Xiaomi, heavily (not for good) customised Android version. And there might be not many OP ROMS, but check in Xiaomi land... many super stable versions that improve almost any Xiaomi device with AOSP or LOS versions.
As I said, maybe all it takes is to support a dev with a device for ROM release... I know I wouldn't be the only one looking forward to this.
Alright let's clear up what XDA is about.
It's a hub for developers. It's not a hub for people coming in with no knowledge demanding/posting hundreds of threads asking for ROMs for a device which is bootloader locked in most cases. Attitude like this steers developers away from devices because of noob communities. Look at the Samsung community on XDA.
Huwaei is still an infant when it comes to Android so they are learning the ins and outs of what works and what doesn't. Give em a break. They produce amazing devices with amazing technology. Just because it's locked doesn't mean you have to get your nickers in a twist because no one wants to develop for a new company on the Android scene. Give it some time. Maybe someone will come along and get the ball rolling for everyone and find a nice little backdoor in the bootloader and make it possible for everyone. Till then don't hold your breath and stamp your feet. Do your research before you flog out a grand on a device that might not have unofficial development for.
I really hope we can open this device up for more development, what could we do with unbridled access to the NPU, 3 rear cameras and the front 3d point cloud camera array
jhs39 said:
If you like custom ROMs so much buy a One Plus phone. Lots of custom ROMs and every custom ROM has bugs. There is no build of any custom ROM that doesn't have bugs and sometimes the bugs on "stable" versions of custom ROMs are so serious they impact the basic functionality of the phone. .
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Click to collapse
Had to pop in here to tell you you're completely wrong on that one.
Off the top of my head. No limits xXx for the OnePlus 5, not a single bug.
From Oreo 8.1 anyway.
A lot for devices have ROMs which surpass stock in more ways than one and have zero bugs
Further to my point and @ the OP.
The p20 pro has only seen ROMs because of the last few users / developers who have committed to Huawei/Honor devices and the fact that Honor view 10 ROMs work on the pro, in light of the changes made by Huawei IE: bootloader lock down, you will not see a lot of ROMs at all for your device in fact anyone who wants to root / flash / unlock their phones should not touch Huawei or Honor ever again, maybe (and that's a big maybe) the greedy pair of OEMs will see sense. But I doubt it.
Advice in short, dont buy their phones, I certainly won't ever again. They don't deserve it after what they've done.

Active developers for the Razer Phone 2?

Hey I just got this phone a couple of weeks back and while its been awhile I used to be a recognized developer on XDA years ago and was wondering if there are any active developers (still) for this device as I notice the list of active development is basically 0. I am planning on building for the device but would like to know who if anyone is developing currently and what the goals are as it seems without anything outside of stock deodexed and (really the biggest one being the kernel with twrp) we have nothing for this phone even now. This makes it seem like either the proprietary information is extremely difficult (although I see the tree is working for the most part) or we just lack developers. Which is it? Thank you and I apologize if this is in the wrong place. I'd like to see what is the current state of things and see if any developers want to work together on this and at least get a clean aosp build or lineage os build. Stepping stones. Certainly with the Note being as similar as it is this shouldn't be lacking to the state it is today.
Hello jcole20
That would be awesome if some devs started doing something with the RP2! If I had the knowledge, I would!! I've had the RP2 since June of this year. I had some issues with it at first but they have been worked out. I really like the phone and it would be cool to see some devs show the RP2 some love lol. Hopefully you can get something started! Take care!
Dennis
jcole20 said:
Hey I just got this phone a couple of weeks back and while its been awhile I used to be a recognized developer on XDA years ago and was wondering if there are any active developers (still) for this device as I notice the list of active development is basically 0. I am planning on building for the device but would like to know who if anyone is developing currently and what the goals are as it seems without anything outside of stock deodexed and (really the biggest one being the kernel with twrp) we have nothing for this phone even now. This makes it seem like either the proprietary information is extremely difficult (although I see the tree is working for the most part) or we just lack developers. Which is it? Thank you and I apologize if this is in the wrong place. I'd like to see what is the current state of things and see if any developers want to work together on this and at least get a clean aosp build or lineage os build. Stepping stones. Certainly with the Note being as similar as it is this shouldn't be lacking to the state it is today.
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I am sure people would love to see some device specific development. I have read that since the release of project treble most people just flash the system image from other roms. I specifically would love to see a stockish rom so I don't loose chroma but still get updated security patches.
I ordered this phone from amazon to try out. I am checking out the community and stuff in the 10 day trial period they give you. I really like the phone... i just hate the software side of things. I feel like its super premium hardware with outdated software... that probably isnt even going to get security patches. Anyway... off to see whats available.
Krazy_Calvin said:
I ordered this phone from amazon to try out. I am checking out the community and stuff in the 10 day trial period they give you. I really like the phone... i just hate the software side of things. I feel like its super premium hardware with outdated software... that probably isnt even going to get security patches. Anyway... off to see whats available.
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Most functionalities work on Pie GSIs out-of-box (you need to manually install ims.apk in order to receive SMS while on LTE, see relevant threads here, or look for it on some GSI threads such as Havoc 2.9). exFAT also works on supported GSI (with arter97's kernel), while it's not supported on stock. The only problems I have so far are bluetooth-related, and also the inability to set SELinux to permissive (not sure which might be the real cause as arter97 stated the SELinux could be permissive).
Bluetooth media audio doesn't work at all on GSI, partly due to the crippling overlays (which prevents aptX from working, and probably some other limitations). Phone calls work with a bluetooth headset, but for some reasons I couldn't properly route phone calls to my Huawei Watch 2 (which means I always have to take the call from my phone directly).
Given the mostly positive result with numerous GSIs (and that some users are happy with stock ROM, or stock-based ROM modifications), active ROM developments for the device itself doesn't seem to be at a high priority (as some might be able to contribute patches for this device to their favorite GSI instead)...
I'm currently working on my own build of LOS. I haven't seen to much active development either I'm new to rom building but looks like we could use all the help we can get!
I think the only active dev we have for this phone is Arter97's kernel and people tinkering with GSIs to get them working as they should. I wish there was more being done with the stock ROM because I like a lot of it's features, but am having a hard time dealing with it's overall instability. I'd be happy to help develop or test in whatever way I can, though.
jcole20 said:
Hey I just got this phone a couple of weeks back and while its been awhile I used to be a recognized developer on XDA years ago and was wondering if there are any active developers (still) for this device as I notice the list of active development is basically 0. I am planning on building for the device but would like to know who if anyone is developing currently and what the goals are as it seems without anything outside of stock deodexed and (really the biggest one being the kernel with twrp) we have nothing for this phone even now. This makes it seem like either the proprietary information is extremely difficult (although I see the tree is working for the most part) or we just lack developers. Which is it? Thank you and I apologize if this is in the wrong place. I'd like to see what is the current state of things and see if any developers want to work together on this and at least get a clean aosp build or lineage os build. Stepping stones. Certainly with the Note being as similar as it is this shouldn't be lacking to the state it is today.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it’s definitely just total lack of interest from other devs. We even have a guy with a prototype Razer Phone 2 with an intact DRM partition and unlocked bootloader (Allowing Netflix HD and Vudu HDX) but we couldn’t even pay anyone to try to port it.
I think if we had a fully working AOSP tree that it would possibly bring other devs into the scene. Who knows though, it has never been a popular device despite how great it is.
LSS4181 said:
Most functionalities work on Pie GSIs out-of-box.
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Noob question:
Do we have to wait for a stock Android 10 for the device to be able to flash Android 10 GSIs?
EMJI79 said:
Noob question:
Do we have to wait for a stock Android 10 for the device to be able to flash Android 10 GSIs?
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Click to collapse
A stock Android 10 (which means a stock vendor image for Android 10) is not necessarily required to have a usable Android 10 ROM (though it may speed up the development to some extent, if it does have one), but for GSI, having a stock Android 10 vendor image can be better (currently it's a hit-or-miss on existing Android 10 GSIs).
Another device that I have, Google Pixel C, never had stock Android 9 (so never had stock vendor images for Android 9, only for up to Android 8.1), but custom Android 9 ROMs are already available (thanks to followmsi's efforts) and are working well. For Android 9 ROMs, the build system builds new vendor images along with system image.
It's just whether we're going to see our device's trees being made possible, so we can start from there to develop our own custom ROMs. The existing materials might be a good starting point in making trees.
- Working with proprietary blobs (from Lineage)
- arter97's kernel (can be useful for making a kernel tree, though one can also consider using stock kernel source as a base)
- Razer factory images and kernel sources (for studying stock ROM/kernel details, and extracting necessary system and vendor blobs)
If you can port LineageOS to this device, great!
I don't understand why people aren't flocking to this device. I came from the LG G6 that probably will be stuck on Oreo forever that is way more popular. The RP2 is cheap, has killer specs + a micro SD card slot + a newer version of Android. Should be a developers dream, you would think. *shrug*
Not sure if anyone's active on this device at present. With RP2's 9.0 MR2 available on the official factory images page the latest proprietary blobs (as well as stock kernel source) are now publicly accessible.
Actually arter97 once mentioned that his RP2 kernel is almost inline with his OP6 kernel (which is also sdm845 and shares some similarities), so it's possible that OP6 (enchilada) trees may be a good starting point, but I'm not sure if any configurations are needed to keep 120Hz working as high refresh rate is relatively uncommon.
My time is very limited so I won't be able to dedicate too much time to experiment on this. At present most functionalities work fine with GSI (including Bluetooth, although tricky and aptX still not working).
IDK how relevant this is anymore but as a new razor phone 2 user to be soon I have been keeping up and it seems that @f(x)THaxxorX could be a possible candidate of what you're looking for I've been keeping up with development on the phone seems like he is doing pretty well even if we get patched gsi which properly work is better than nothing.

Hi all

Hi folks
Have grown interested in either using or compiling my own ROM as my trusty old pixel 2XL is about to give up the ghost and I just don't feel the need to drop a huge amount on a new model.
I have used redmi before, a 6A - when I say I, I mean I bought them for my young kid who had a tendency to lose shoes so buying a fancy phone was out. He is now older and more responsible so has a much nicer phone than I do.
The interface (mui something) is a bit odd - I wanted to experiment and change the ROM to PE - but it looks like there are no prebuilt images for this model.
I have some experience in programming - a little rusty these days but I did manage to download the source code for the pixel 2XL and compile it on a Linux PC, a linux VM under hyper-v and the relatively new WSL2 to get a feel of the process and what requirements may be involved on my side.
So this is obviously different from windows PC's where install the OS and then you choose to install all the drivers required for your particular PC. Looks like you need some kind of build sheet and access to those devices source code. This is the part I'm kind of stuck at. I've been looking on youtube but all I seem to get are many versions of essentially the same video - build PE from source..... for an already supported device.... which I already can do. No movement forward ...
Also the the new device I was looking at as a replacement for my aging pixel is not supported yet (redmi note 11 - I am considering the 10 if all else fails)
sorry for posting what I can assume must be an obvious question but i'm on the struggle bus trying to find a good answer

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