Store Rom And Warranties

[nameless123]

Good evening everybody,

Consider me another person who has completely surrendered to the Xiaomi smartphones and I'm considering buying asap my first model: the Redmi Note 3 (not sure if the normal or the PRO version). However, I have a few questions that I would like to clarify before I buy it:

1 - Honorbuy indicates a 1 year warranty for electronic equipments. However, from what I read and know, there is an EU law decree that states that all purchases within the EU have the mandatory right to 2 years guarantee. If the purchas is made from a UE warehouse, shouldn't the guarantee be of 2 years?
2 - I have read that one of the first things you should do after buying a Xiaomi is to remove the ROM provided by the store and replace it with an "official" one (global or european or portuguese, in my case) + last updated version. What are the reasons behind this "theory" and what procedure should I follow to install a current and properly funcional ROM?
3 - Does updating the ROM invalidates the warranty?

Thanks in advance for all the help given.

Best regards.

 

[Harald Reimann-Trusheim]

1. To my knowledge the important fact is not the warehouse from which the shipment is made, it is indeed the store. Most Webstores are chinese, so the law applied to your contract (puchase) is chinese. The location of its warehouse does not change anything. So you buy from china and the seller sends your item from a warehouse of his choice.
2. Most "Store-ROMs" are bloated with chinese Apps you don't want and don't need. There were even reported cases of chinese phones infected with malware, so using the manufactures original firmware is a good choice. If you want to unlock your bootloader and install a custom rom you must use the original developer rom to officially unlock your phone. A shop-rom won't do the trick. The simplest method would be to politely ask the shop to leave the original rom on your phone before the order is completed.
3. If you got your phone with a firmware with OTA updates this could not affect your warranty, because it is an integral part of the firmware to update itself. If you change the firmware to eg xiaomi.eu or sphinx, CM ... and something goes wrong, your on your own. If your firmware is ok, you could revert to the original in case of hardware defects that don't leave you unable to flash.

PS. please excuse my crude english. I'm german and not used to write in english.

 

[nameless123]

[QUOTE="The simplest method would be to politely ask the shop to leave the original rom on your phone before the order is completed.[/QUOTE]

Harald,

The original rom? Isn't it entirely in chinese or does it contain other languages?

 

[Harald Reimann-Trusheim]

The china stable and develop contain english and chinese. The global a few more other ( don't know which ). Try to google if your language is upon the included languages. Getting your phone with makes it easier to unlock your bootloader using the official miunlock tool. From there you can use any other custom rom.
I've had to flash the original firmware as a fastboot rom to get rid of the shop-rom in order to unlock my bootloader.
If you want a custom recovery like twrp you must unlock your bootloader.

 

[nameless123]

The china stable and develop contain english and chinese. The global a few more other ( don't know which ). Try to google if your language is upon the included languages. Getting your phone with makes it easier to unlock your bootloader using the official miunlock tool. From there you can use any other custom rom.
I've had to flash the original firmware as a fastboot rom to get rid of the shop-rom in order to unlock my bootloader.
If you want a custom recovery like twrp you must unlock your bootloader.

Thanks a lot Harald,

I wasn't aware that the global ROM was a different one of the chinese one. I checked around the internet and it seems like the global ROM has all the google services and less chinese apps, making it better for EU users.

Do you know what's the best current ROM for the Redmi Note 3?


Thanks again, you have been extremely helpful

 

[Harald Reimann-Trusheim]

I choose the xiaomi.eu rom. Since i like to experiment ( to some extend ) i flashed the new miui 8 Rom with weekly updates. You can also stay on stable if you like. This rom has a lot of languages (especially german ;-) ) there are no bloatware apps and The Google apps are also installed.

The ability to easily update ( by downloading the weekly update ) with the update app delivered by xiaomi gives a nice bonus.
I tried the Global dev and the sphinx custom rom. at first i installed the stable branch, but later on I got adventurous.

 

[nameless123]

What are the pros and of using a stable official Xiaomi rom vs a custom xiaomi.eu rom?

 

[Harald Reimann-Trusheim]

The only advantage I see is not voiding your warranty. At least the weekly updates are as fast as the original xiaomi updates.