For Xiaomi, India is the company's most successful foreign market, and the Redmi Note lineup has undoubtedly contributed a lot behind this monumental accomplishment. Despite facing cut-throat competition from other companies, both the regular and the Pro variants of the Redmi Note 8 managed to make their way into the global top 10 list of best-selling smartphones on Q4 2019. Xiaomi's decision to incorporate the gaming-oriented MediaTek Helio G90T SoC inside the Redmi Note 8 Pro (our review) did raise some eyebrows in the aftermarket development community, but the company addressed those concerns by publishing the kernel source code for the phone rather quickly. In a bid to make the device more attractive to tinkerers, we collaborated with Xiaomi to ship units to custom ROM and kernel developers. Owners of the phone will be glad to know that many custom developments have popped up for the Redmi Note 8 Pro over the last few weeks, including OrangeFox Recovery (fork of TWRP), a Google Camera port, and unofficial builds of several custom ROMs such as LineageOS.
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While official TWRP support for this phone arrived months ago, the nature of MediaTek codebase, as well as the controversial EDL Lockdown, made it quite hard for developers to muck around with the otherwise capable device. Even the stable Android 10 update package released by Xiaomi can cause a hard brick in some scenarios, which significantly slowed down the pace of third-party development. Fortunately, a leaked factory firmware helped modders find out a way to partially bypass the roadblocks. You can find out more about the unbrick process in this thread, and we strictly advise you to give it a thorough read before playing around with the custom ROMs listed below.
Redmi Note 8 Pro Mods
LineageOS (Unofficial)
XDA Recognized Developer TheImpulson was among the list of developers to receive a device from us, and thanks to that, we now have an unofficial build of LineageOS 17.1 based on Android 10. Although the ROM is fairly usable, the list of caveats is significantly long at this stage. VoLTE and NFC (on global variant) are not working and the full resolution of the camera sensor can't be utilized at this moment. Moreover, the fingerprint sensor can be glitchy from time to time. You can try it out on your phone by following the link below.
Download unofficial LineageOS 17.1 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
POSP (Official beta) and Pixel Experience (Unofficial)
If you’re a fan of barebone stock Android, you can also try out the Potato Open Sauce Project, AKA POSP. The AOSP-based ROM is created by XDA Recognized Developer Agent_fabulous, who is also the maintainer of this particular phone. If you want some Google Pixel goodies on top of vanilla Android, you can also give the Pixel Experience ROM by XDA Member ZIDAN44 a go. According to the developers, the current build might not be suitable as a daily driver due to a partially working radio interface layer. If you want to bite the bullet anyway, grab the builds from the following links.
Download official (beta) POSP v3.1.3+8 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
Download unofficial Pixel Experience 10 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
CesiumOS (Unofficial) and Evolution X (Unofficial)
If customization is your thing, then you can also check out the CesiumOS v2.5.2 and Evolution X 4.1 ROMs for this phone, as both of them pack in a ton of features. You get access to everything from status bar customization options to lock screen personalization features with them. However, the aforementioned issues are also present in these ROMs. Try them out by following the links below.
Download unofficial CesiumOS v2.5.2 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
Download unofficial Evolution X 4.1 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
OrangeFox Recovery (Unofficial)
Besides cooking up CesiumOS, XDA Senior Member Sahil_Sonar has also released an OrangeFox Recovery build for this phone as well. This popular fork of TWRP fully supports MIUI update zip flashing as well as an integrated Magisk flasher. The developer has also added support for Android 10. Download the OrangeFox Recovery package from the link below.
Download unofficial OrangeFox Recovery R10.1 for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
Google Camera port
If you want to get the most out of the camera, you can check out the Google Camera port for this phone maintained by XDA Senior Member Wyroczen. Even the auxiliary camera sensors reportedly work fine with the latest ported version. Try it out by following the link below.