MIUI 10 beta 9.3.14 fixes PUBG notch issue in Poco F1 and other Xiaomi phones

NOTICE: We’ve created an archive of all major developments related to the Pocophone F1 smartphone. We are continuously updating that page with latest Poco F1 news so that you don’t need to search for information related to the device on daily basis. Head here to access that page.

I’m not sure how to describe the display notches. Smartphone users have a love-hate relationship with them. For some, they helped to make the display taller without making the phone bigger. For the others, well… let’s stop right here.

As we mentioned in one of our previous articles, notches are nothing but an intermediate outcome of the evolution of display techs. Samsung popularized the punch hole design with Galaxy S10, whereas Huawei took a different path in Honor View 20.

This world-first, in-screen front camera design, achieved by an extremely complex 18-layer technology stack that carefully embeds the front camera in the display area of the screen, extends the display area to almost 100%.

Technical jargons aside, these ‘irregularities’ are making things complicated for app developers. Moreover, Google introduced new guidelines to handle notch related optimizations, which essentially nullified manufacturer specific fixes (or ‘hacks’).

Official MIUI developers decided to follow Google’s policy, thus they removed their own notch handling mechanism in Android 9 Pie builds. It was present on Oreo based MIUI though.

Apps like PUBG started to create issues while displaying the in-game contents on the screen after Pie update. Xiaomi passed the ball to the court of Tencent Games (developer of PUBG Mobile) for fixing the bugs.

According to Alvin Tse (Head of Pocophone Global), PUBG devs confirmed them that an upcoming update of the game in March should end the complication.

PUBG Mobile received a new beta update (0.11.5) a couple of days ago which brought new vehicles and weapons along with small fixes. Nothing related to notch handling was there in the changelog.

On the other hand, Xiaomi is currently rolling out MIUI 9.3.14 global beta update for eligible devices. In a surprising turn of events, this update brings a new feature: per app notch handling.

Users need to navigate to Settings => Full screen display => Notch in individual apps and then choose any apps to fill the notch. The option can also be accessed directly via Special Features sub-category of Settings.

And guess what? You can now optimize PUBG Mobile using this new option and the game will run perfectly – rendering the full display as well as handing the notch.

Users are already reporting the effectiveness of the fix:

As always, the official changelog does not explicitly mention about this functionality.

Courtesy to yshalsager and Xiaomi Firmware Updater project, the direct links to the OTA update packages are here for manual flashing.

• Device: Poco F1 / Pocophone F1
• Codename: beryllium
• Channel: Global (India) Beta
• Version: 9.3.14
• Android: 9.0
  • Type: Recovery
    • Download: Link
    • MD5: aab949b0b542dafa06528b76fdcd7a5c
  • Type: Fastboot
    • Download: Link
    • MD5: 756e94e86f82cd0913485ae075ae72b2

Time to drive the auto rickshaw without bothering the notch in your Pocophone F1!

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