In the past, Xiaomi has experienced Android fragmentation on its devices. Since the brand has its own philosophy thanks to its MIUI software, it didn't particularly care about updating the base version of Android on multiple devices. However, this has changed over the past few years.
The brand has been pushing Android updates more often while it fixes all the issues with its MIUI updates. So far, MIUI-based devices are getting better Android support than the company's latest Android One device.
The brand has already pushed the Android 11 update for Mi 10, Mi 10 Pro and Redmi K30 Pro last September. This has been remarkable since Android 11 came out that month.
The company then moved on to release Android 11 for Mi Note 10 Lite, Redmi Note 9 Pro / 9S and others. The brand is currently rolling out Android 11 to the Mi 10T Lite and Redmi Note 8 in China. That's right, the 2019 mid-range phone is unexpectedly getting its second major update.
The Mi 10T Lite has three different region-specific variants. In China, the device is sold as Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G, in India - Mi 10i. So far, only the global variant is getting the Android 11 update. Also, the international Mi Note 10 is getting the Android 11 update after months of waiting. Right now, the most surprising and interesting case is the Redmi Note 8 getting the Android 11 update in China.
The Redmi Note 8 is getting its second major Android update
The Redmi Note 8 was launched in September 2019 alongside the Redmi Note 8 Pro. The device comes with Android 9 Pie out of the box and was updated to Android 10 in China a few months later. Instead, the global variant took months to receive a stable update to Android 10. It comes with MIUI 12 running on top.
For this reason, global users should not hold their breath to upgrade to Android 11 right now. With all that said, in a couple of months, most Redmi Note 8 owners will be running Android 11, which is an impressive milestone for a mid-range phone.
While Xiaomi promised to update the Redmi Note 8 to Android 10, it never promised two major Android updates. Of course, we expect Android 11 to be the deadline for this phone, which is one of the company's best-selling smartphones so far. Although the update comes for Chinese devices, if you have an unlocked bootloader with TWRP (Custom Recovery) installed, you can easily install this version on your phone.
Moreover, it will only be a matter of time until the talented MIUI.EU developers provide a multilingual version of this Android 12-based MIUI 11 update.
It is worth noting that it does not offer MIUI 12.5, but it is likely to come with the global variant. However, these updates are "stable beta". For this reason, proceed with caution.
