[Bricking] Redmi Note 5 (Pro) Android Pie 9.0 stable update rolling out in China as well as in India

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

The Redmi Note lineup never cease to amaze me. Xiaomi took shameless ‘inspiration’ from Samsung Note series, and authored the perfect combination of features with a highly affordable price tag. The outcome is clearly visible.

2019’s seventh generation Redmi Note phones are technically the direct descendant of 2018’s Redmi Note 5 Pro (also known as Redmi Note 5 in China and Redmi Note 5 AI Dual Camera in global markets). The Redmi Note 6 Pro was more of a stopgap.

Xiaomi’s shotgun marketing strategy and truckload of regional variants/rebranded phones can easily confuse regular users, so there is an easy trick to identify the devices by codenames. For example, the Redmi Note 5 Pro/Chinese Redmi Note 5 has the codename of ‘whyred’.

This ‘whyred’ was shipped with Android Nougat in India, although it featured a separate /vendor partition from the beginning for Project Treble compatibility.

The Chinese OEM eventually rolled out Android 8.1 Oreo update, which populated the /vendor partition. Redmi Note 5 Pro eventually received MIUI 10 update with a number of extra features.

As a matter of fact, ‘whyred’ became the first Redmi Note series phone to receive two major Android version update when the MIUI team published their internal beta testing roadmap.

Xiaomi maintained the schedule as the Redmi Note 5/6 Pro got Android 9.0 Pie update via weekly beta channels (both China and global) at the end of March after a brief amount of internal beta testing.

After almost two months of public beta rollout, the Redmi Note 6 Pro (codename: tulip) recently got the Pie update via stable channel MIUI V10.3.2.0.PEKMIXM. To the contrary, the Redmi Note 5 Pro was stuck at Oreo, even on MIUI 10.3 branch.

Well, it seems that someone at Xiaomi headquarter turned crazy and started to play with the OTA servers. Believe it or not, as the Redmi Note 5 Pro in China (sold as Redmi Note 5 there) are now receiving Android Pie OTA update without any prior announcement.

The actual changelog is as follows:

App lock

– New: Face unlock support

Clock

– Fix: Timer button started flashing after being tapped

– Fix: Clock force closed on some specific dates

Calculator

– Fix: When Mi AI was off, Calculator crashed in some cases

Weather

– New: Animations for cloudy and smoggy weather

– Optimization: Adjustments for 15-day forecast curves

– Optimization: Issues related to big text size and screen resolution

Settings

– Optimization: The Apps section of the Settings got a structural revamp

– Fix: Icons weren’t displayed correctly after adjusting fonts

Game speed booster

– New: Floating windows for incoming calls during games

Are you able to locate the discrepancy? Similar to the ‘accidental’ rollout of the MIUI V10.3.2.0.PEFCNXM OTA update for Redmi S2/Y2, Xiaomi did not mention anything related to Android Pie in the changelog.

Moreover, the software before this starge OTA carried the version number of V10.3.4.0.OEICNXM – a higher tag than the current Pie build. Another ‘accidental’ anomaly?

It is good to see that the new build brings the latest May security patches, alongside the SoC specific patches (Day 5 update patch level). The guys over xiaomi.eu have their hands on the build some hours ago, which helps us to locate this update.

The recovery zip can be downloaded from the following link. I like to thank my friend yshalsager and the Xiaomi Firmware Updater project for tracking the OTA update URL(s).

• Device: Redmi Note 5 (Pro)
• Codename: whyred
• Channel: China Stable
• Version: V10.3.1.0.PEICNXM
• Android: 9.0
  • Type: Recovery
    • Download: Link
    • MD5: 38eb804e2bd7f94745ddd4f08b429c86

Flasholics, take a deep breath before blindly flashing this update. The Redmi Note 5 Pro comes with anti-rollback (ARB) enabled, thus you can brick your phone by cross-flashing different regional firmware.

If you have already unlocked the bootloader, then you can try out the xiaomi.eu ROM for whyred based on this build. Be prepared for some glitches and/or small bugs, as this is a major upgrade.

The global version of the same update is now live, which can be installed on Indian units as well.

• Device: Redmi Note 5 (Pro)
• Codename: whyred
• Channel: Global Stable
• Version: V10.3.1.0.PEIMIXM
• Android: 9.0
  • Type: Recovery
    • Download: Link
    • MD5: d4d2c9f2aac0cc9180614ceca6d7eedd

The stable Pie update for Redmi Note 5 (Pro) reportedly bricks Chinese units running global ROM (and vice-versa), even on unlocked bootloader. Read on to know more.

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