How to Unbrick & Downgrade any Xiaomi Phone from Developer ROM to Stable ROM

So Xiaomi has locked the bootloader and its not going to be as easy as before to get into the recovery mode on their phones and go about the freedom of flashing. One would need an official approval from Xiaomi to be able to do this. But there are occasions where one cannot wait for the elongated periods of time that Xiaomi takes to roll out OTAs and many a times we go ahead and flash the Developer ROM. There could be instances where it could be unstable or you may encounter bugs and hence you want to revert to the “Stable” ROM that you came from.

It could be as easy as downloading the stable ROM from MIUI Forums > Downloads and flashing it via Updater app. But in the recent past, more often than not users have been getting the “Couldn’t verify update package” error when they try to do so. There are many workaround for this but none of them assure you can move back to the stable ROM. And with the locked bootloader getting into the recovery too is a pain now. We found ourselves stuck in such a situation when we updated our Redmi Note 3 to MIUI 8 Developer ROM and somehow wanted to move back to the stable MIUI 7.

Following instructions can be used to seamlessly DOWNGRADE any Xiaomi phone from ANY Developer ROM version to ANY Stable ROM version!

Lets start with the files that you may need for the process:

Important Note: This process will erase all the data on the phone so make sure you’ve backed up everything before you start off the process

1. ADB Zip
2. Fastboot file/zip for your Xiaomi Phone
3. MIUI ROM Flashing Tool or MI Flash

Step 1: Enabling USB Debugging

1. Get to Settings > About Phone and look for MIUI Version
2. Tap on MIUI Version around 7 times until you see a message for the “Developer Tools” being enabled
3. Move over to Settings > Additional Settings > Developer Tools
4. Enable “USB Debugging” option via toggle

Step 2: Moving the phone to Download Mode

Note: This is NOT the same as Fastboot Mode

1. Unzip the ADB.zip file that was downloaded earlier
2. Hit Shift + Right Click inside the folder on a blank space
3. Choose “Open Command Window Here”
4. Connect the phone to the PC
5. Execute the following commands:
   1. adb devices [Hit enter. Once done, it should show a device number]
   2. adb reboot edl [Hit enter]
6. The phone will reboot into Download mode. You should see the LED light blink in red

Step 3: Verifying if the PC / Laptop is detecting the phone

1. Click on Start
2. Locate “Computer” and right click on it
3. Select “Manage”
4. Click on “Device Manager”
5. At the top you should see “Android Phone” and under that “Xiaomi Composite MDB Interface”
6. In case the phone isn’t getting detected or you have some issue, proceed to Step 4 else jump to Step 5

Step 4: Getting the PC / Laptop to recognize the phone and manage Driver Signature Enforcement

1. Hop over to C:\Windows\System32
2. Shift+Right Click and choose “Open Command Window Here”
3. Run the following commands:
   1. bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions ENABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
   2. bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING OFF
4. Ideally the above commands should run fine and you should get a success message. But in case you get the “bcdedit.exe is not recognized as an internal” error, perform the following and follow steps 1 thru 3 again:
   1. Go to Start > Computer
   2. Right click and hit “Properties”
   3. Then click on “Advanced System Settings”
   4. Go to “Advanced” tab and click on “Environment Variables”
   5. Look for “Path” in the top and bottom boxes. If not found, click on “New”, naming it as “Path” and for the Value, provide the following:
      1. C:\Windows\System32 and save
   6. Note, in case the path for your System 32 is different, specify that path. In most cases, it would be the path we just mentioned.

Step 5: Flashing the ROM

1. Unzip the fastboot file that you’ve downloaded for your phone into a folder
2. Unzip and install the Mi Flash tool
3. Right click on the Mi Flash executor and “Run As Administrator”
4. Click on “Browse”
5. Now set the path of the fastboot file extract and select “Image”
6. Now Click on “Browse” and “Advanced”
7. Now in the first line, choose “flashall.bat”
8. Choose “Flash All” at the bottom on the radio button
9. Now hit the Refresh button at the top and your phone should be recognized and will show up
10. Then select Flash. Give it some 10 minutes.
11. Once the green progress bar goes full, it would say “The operation complete successfully”

Step 6: Finishing up

1. Unplug the phone from the cable
2. Press the power button and hold it for 10-20 seconds until you feel some vibrations
3. Let go of the power button
4. Your Xiaomi phone will now boot up into the stable ROM that was flashed and take you thru the setup as if it were a new phone!
5. In case there any more updates on the ROM, the device would prompt you for an update, go ahead and do it

Hope you found this article useful, do let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.