Older and entry-level Xiaomi phones will no longer receive MIUI beta ROMs

Older and entry-level Redmi phones will no longer receive MIUI 10 beta ROMs. (Source: XDA Developers)

Xiaomi is adopting a new policy for the delivery of beta MIUI ROMs. Henceforth, devices that are more than a year older will be gradually withdrawn from participating in the beta program. Entry-level Redmi devices are also exempted from enrolling for MIUI beta. That being said, this does not affect the eligibility of the aforementioned devices from getting stable MIUI updates.

by Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 2019/06/11

Xiaomi is making some policy changes for the eligibility criteria to receive MIUI beta ROMs, according to an official post on the MIUI Forums. A MIUI project lead posted that this move was to streamline development and channel R&D towards optimizing the experience for newer models.

Starting this July 5, Xiaomi phones older than a year (prior to June 2018) will be gradually withdrawn from the beta program and will be offered only stable ROMs. Newer phones get to participate in the ROM development process for at least a year after which their eligibility will be determined based on popular demand. Xiaomi said that the user would be informed three months prior to withdrawal of beta eligibility for their model and will be given the option to switch to the stable ROM.

Also, Xiaomi is shutting the doors for entry-level Redmi phones to participate in the MIUI beta program. The company didn't list any specific devices but assured that the stable releases will not be affected. However, users should still be able to manually install beta ROMs by unlocking the bootloader.

The vast majority of users couldn't care less about beta software so they unlikely to be affected by this policy change given that the stable ROM releases are not impacted by this. Also, the policy currently seems to be applicable only to Chinese devices, but we are yet to know if Xiaomi would be extending this to global Redmi phones as well.