Dear /e/ community,
I would love to see /e/ on my Xiaomi 8a devices.
It should be GSI compatible, but roms are not really available at the moment.
Please support this device, so that me and others have a clean operating system.
Codename checked with device id(from codekiemcom), it is olivelite.
Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online services
I’d like to add my vote for this device – my mother has one, but she is dissatisfied with the bloated glitchy stock ROM, so I’d love to install /e/ for her.
cDroid officialy supports it since Aug 2021:
I’ve tried installing the GSI and documented what was necessary in this thread in case anybody else wants to attempt it, too.
While I was able to get it to boot into the UI, it is not anywhere close to being usable in practice.
The UI is incredibly glitchy and laggy and I was only able to go through the initial setup process with several reboots. The lock screen is fully transparent with only the text shadows showing, the Bliss launcher hangs a lot for no clear reason, WIFI cannot be enabled (though the documentation for the abandoned unofficial LineageOS build mentioned earlier in this thread says “If WiFi doesn’t work, try flashing custom kernel”, so there are likely ways to fix it).
The cruel thing is that when it works, it works very well and it’s infinitely more snappy than MIUI, all default apps like Settings, Browser, Mail, etc. open fine and respond instantly – when they do. The camera works, too, but launching the camera app and taking a photo causes another multitude of hangs.
It’s a real shame since it works well enough to make it painfully obvious how well /e/ could work on this device. If we had official support, that phone could be used for many more years, and not only that, it would be much better than it ever was with the original ROM.
I keep my fingers crossed that we’ll see an official version one day.
I’m not 100% sure I’m not missing something, but I think we might have LineageOS support!
I’ll try this as soon as I can find some spare time.
An official lineage would be awesome, I never saw that these devices (Xiaomi Redmi 7A / 8 / 8A / 8A Dual (Mi439)) can run with the same rom.
I look forward to your report. 
Which recovery do you use on the olivelite?
I tested “fastboot boot twrp-3.7.0_9-0-olivelite.img” from the twrp website on the device without flash and the boot failed.
It even wouldn’t start the system anymore, had to reset the device.
I didn’t flash any custom recovery since I didn’t know if these older builds would work for current versions of Android or not. I used the fastboot flash command instead. Details are in this thread.
Test results with LineageOS 20 are very promising. Flashing worked without issues. I just followed their instructions. I didn’t flash GApps.
Pretty much everything I tested works absolutely flawlessly so far, including WiFi, Calls, SMS, Bluetooth, Flashlight, Dual SIM and Camera.
The only issue I was able to find is that in light UI mode a few icons on the bottom right corner of the keyboard are occasionally invisible, but that’s really a minor problem. So far I have also not succeeded in registering Signal; the verification SMS step is a bit temperamental as always (didn’t spend too much time on it though).
The responsiveness of the device is nothing short of phenomenal, especially compared to stock MIUI. The lack of bloatware makes the system very usable even with the meager 32 GB of internal storage.
In summary, highly recommended until we have /e/ for this model.
That sounds good, I’ll try it out in the next few days. Please let me know if you are still testing Magisk or gapps.
I’m afraid I have no plans for that as of now. I’m trying to stay away from Google as much as possible. With NewPipe, Magic Earth, Fennec, K9, F-Droid/Aurora Store and Synology Contacts/Calendar synced via DAVx5, I don’t currently see any need to make the additional privacy compromises that flashing GApps would incur.
Great news, it seems that we now quietly got official support for /e/ on the Redmi 8a, alongside a few other new devices!
Big thanks to everyone on the /e/ project and the LineageOS project who made this possible!
