Noob Help Needed Flashing

[G3neral]

HI all. To make matters short, after three years of being a huawei user I've bought my self one xiaomi mi4 lte-cu.

It came with stock 4.4.4. kitkat and MIUI 7 by xioami.eu 5.12.11 Beta.
My question is what would be the best rom for my phone (Mi 4LTE-CU 2/16 gb). I am looking for good battery life, stability (everything works like it should) and good camera quality. And if anyone can point me in the right direction what are the best instructions for backup (before upgrade), and the instructions for upgrade (necessary steps).

Now I get aprox 4h of screen on time (with 4g and wifienabled interchangeably), everything works most of the time ok (sometimes some games crash depending on the battery level), and the picture quality of the camera is so so.

My previous phone was Huawei P7, which by available specification should have an identical sony camerasensor. However, it produced better photo quality by order of magnitued (in my humble opinion). I wonder why is this so?

As far as I have gathered, from reading this forum, I need to merge partitions for upgrade. Do I need to do this before flashing via fastboot latest miui rom, or does the fastboot flash do by itself?

Any help would be much obliged....

 

[Stanstok]

Info: http://en.miui.com/a-234.html
it's the latest firmware,
download: http://api.en.miui.com/url/MiFlashTool
cancro_global_images_8.3.1_20180301.0000.00_6.0_global_4cbfa9ff2b.tgz
http://bigota.d.miui.com/8.3.1/cancro_global_images_8.3.1_20180301.0000.00_6.0_global_4cbfa9ff2b.tgz

TestPoint:

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[G3neral]

So I can flash firmware directly and it will merge partitions?

Why do i need test point?

 

[Stanstok]

[QUOTE = "G3neral, post: 412103, członek: 190098"] Czy mogę bezpośrednio zapisać oprogramowanie układowe i scalić partycje?

Dlaczego potrzebuję punktu testowego? [/ QUOTE]
if the phone is unlocked then fastboot if not TestPoint

 

[G3neral]

So I do not need to 2x flash the old 5.12.17 firmware for partition merge?

Any other way of unlocking without testpoint?

 

[Stanstok]

the bootloader is blocked ?

 

[Pertti Kosunen]

MiFlash latest includes merged partitions.

Cancro can be unlocked with fastboot.

 

[G3neral]

Ok, your posts have been much helpful. Today I will give it a try.

Just one more question, what does cancro mean?

 

[G3neral]

I finally after some hours, managed to flash the latest global developer rom. The problem is the latest mi flash does not work. So any noobs out there be warned, do not use the latest mi flash from 2017, use the last version from 2016.

New miui looks good, feels much snapier than the old kitkat. Battery life I am still to test...

Although, I do miss some of the old features, like the lock screen animation (like old tv shutting down), and there is no theme manager (to download new themes).

 

[Henning]

"cancro" is the nickname for the board. It makes it easier to identify which rom fit's to the phones hardware.
i.e. https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/cancro