Hello
@Mark F and everybody else.
I've been doing research on migrating to EU rom for the past 2 weeks. My phone just arrived 3 days ago and I've already started the unlock countdown just now (trying to resolve the unactivated SIM).
A little bit about myself. I am coming from Huawei P30 pro and Huawei P10, and so far, I am very happy with those two phones. Prior to that I was using Samsung Exynos, and so far, I think I am better off sticking with Huawei. I'd have chosen Huawei again only if it came with Google. My friend uses a Huawei, and I can tell you that for the price it feels like shortchanged, but he lives with it. I don't think I can.
Anyway, in my short time with Xiaomi, it so far is great, good camera functions, even better than my P30 pro, 120W ultra fast charging, great display, smooth animations, I love that the notification sound is randomized bird chirping, I still retain my remote control feature, overall very nice personal experience.
However, there are some nitpick issues,
1) Huawei has a sidebar to summon floating windows, and although xiaomi can also summon using the app preview and selecting floating windows, but it's 1-step vs 2-step. I use that feature quite a lot.
2) Funnily, you can't put calculator on the floating window. You can have the floating calculator; but you have to exit whatever you're doing, find calculator, open calculator and select floating window, and then open back whatever you were opening to reference that vs summon sidebar, select calculator. I wished the floating calculator was an option in floating window (in app preview) or at least on the status bar. Workaround is to install third party calculator, but it's a shame. They have a very nice calculator.
3) For some reason, if I'm typing and I want to select a word, perhaps somewhere in the middle of the sentence, I can't double tap or long press to select the word. I need to long press and press select.
4) I can't have google maps timeline.
5) 1.5 days of battery life compared to 2 days on the Huawei P30 pro. Maybe I need to tone down the 120Hz, but sometimes I find that the 60Hz is quite jarring. Like they want to tell you that 60Hz is so ugly.
6) Search (swipe up from middle) is in chinese. It's like a VM in your phone. Every other part of your phone is english(or mostly English), then this 1 part is all chinese.
I am wondering if A11 fixes any of the above issues =)
Anyway, from a noob/general user standpoint, I'm getting plenty confused, even with the help of the search function of the forum (searching TWRP alone brings up 10 pages of threads to go through) and as I understand, when the thread was started, things was a bit different.
I know that the EU rom is enthusiasts' work and I thank everyone for their hard work. I really appreciate the effort.
May I suggest starting a new thread, or editing the first post as a guide to install A11 since some of the info are not exactly relevant?
Also, is this info still relevant for installing A11?