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

Back in February, the Android community experienced a tactical battle between two major Android OEMs. As Samsung was preparing to launch the 10th anniversary edition of Galaxy S series, Xiaomi announced their early flagship – Mi 9 – on the same day!

Powered by Snapdragon 855 platform, Mi 9 runs Android Pie based MIUI 10 builds right out of the box. The tripe rear camera arrangement consists of a 48 MP primary sensor. The size of the battery is kind of small in today’s standard – merely 3,300 mAh; but 27W fast charging support is present too.

Along with Mi MIX 3 5G, Mi 9 was selected as Xiaomi’s nominee in the Android Q public beta testing. Redmi K20 Pro later joined the roster, but the first phone to be selected for MIUI based Android Q internal evaluation was none other than Mi 9.

Eventually one of the internal beta builds of Android Q for Mi 9 was leaked, while the company announced to ship the stable update within Q4 of 2019. Later on, we spotted an internal declaration about closing the MIUI China beta for Mi 9 for the upcoming Android Q based testing builds.

A member of the MIUI development team has posted a list of apps that are currently found to be incompatible with Android Q. I should not call it a coincidence, as the first Android Q based MIUI beta is finally rolling out for Mi 9!

Being a major version shifting, the OEM is pushing a full size (~2.4 GB) OTA for the beta testers. The changelog mentions none other than the arrival of Android Q. We are not sure whether this particular build is intended for th closed group or not, but plenty of users are reporting about getting the update.

They shipped a kernel based on 4.14 branch. The security patch level is quite fascinating, as Xiaomi apparently becomes the first OEM to integrate September patches ahead of everyone (placeholder?).

As per Xiaomi’s nomenclature, the internal Android version is mostly uncorrelated with MIUI versioning. The above screenshot is a perfect example of that, as the MIUI version is still listed as 10.

Dark mode lovers, rejoice! A revamped toggle for system-wide dark mode is now accessible. Hopefully this design will be propagated to other Xiaomi/Redmi phones in due time.

We got our hands on the update package of this Android Q based MIUI OTA for Mi 9, which can be downloaded using the following link. You may find some difficulties to flash it using traditional methods – especially on global/European Mi 9 units – so proceed with caution!

Device: Mi 9

Codename: cepheus

Channel: China Beta

Version: 9.8.8

Android: 10 Type: Recovery Download: Link MD5: 3a4ce7abb00bd2f00e1fd2f2aff29ea1



Don’t forget to tell us your findings!

Update 1 (August 9)

As anticipated, the Android Q based semi-internal MIUI beta update is now available for Redmi K20 Pro in China. See here for further details.

Update 2 (August 25)

The Android Q (10) based MIUI build for Mi 9 is now available as public beta in China.

Device: Mi 9

Codename: cepheus

Channel: China Beta

Version: 9.8.22

Android: 10 Type: Recovery Download: Link MD5: aa276705727fbbe23e6c05b51df2f42c



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