Despite the fact that Xiaomi releases a lot of devices every year, the company is really consistent about pushing out new versions of MIUI, its custom Android skin, to older smartphones. It shows how committed it is to its ROM, but it’s had the unintended side effect of discouraging some developers in the community from updating their custom firmware. That’s one of the reasons why XDA Recognized Developer yshalsager released the Xiaomi Firmware Updater tool, which puts the power to update Xioami device firmware in users’ hands.
Xiaomi manages a couple of update channels with different versions of MIUI. One of its OEM ROM versions is specific to China, and is available in both Stable and Developer flavors. Devices sold in other markets use the Global version of MIUI, which also comes in Stable and Developer versions. Developer OEM ROMs get updated by Xiaomi every Friday, while Stable OEM ROMs see an update every two weeks. With the rapidity of new software releases, it’s easy to see why some community developers have chosen to not update their firmware every time a MIUI update becomes available.
The Xiaomi Firmware Updater tool solves the problem by automatically downloading the Global/Chinese and Stable/Developer versions of official MIUI ROMs for more than a dozen devices. It takes the MIUI firmware and extracts the firmware-update folder, generates a flashable ZIP file with an auto-written “updater-script”, and automatically uploads it to two servers yshalsager’s set up for the purpose.
The tool doesn’t support every Xiaomi device, but the developer has been gracious enough to give us a full list of the smartphones the Xiaomi Firmware Updater does support.
Source: Xiaomibuying, Xda