Xiaomi’s latest flagship killer recently paid us a visit. The Pocophone F1 has to be one of the most polarizing devices of 2018. Packing a Snapdragon 845 SoC, upto 8GB RAM and upto 256GB storage backed by an enthusiastic developer community, Xiaomi’s right on track on making the Pocophone F1 for everyone.
Last week, many users of the Pocophone F1 noticed a few discrepancies with the Pocophone F1, from the absence of a 4K/60FPS option to the lack of Widevine L1 support across the board. The head of Pocophone, Jai Mani had promised to bring everything if the they find that the community actually wants it. In addition to that, he also promised to make unlocking the bootloader a bit less cumbersome and has since invited a number of developers to contribute ROMs and tweaks for the Pocophone F1.
Do note though, it could take up to 72 hours before you actually have your bootloader unlocked and ready to be flashed. This restriction has been put in place by Xiaomi themselves, so be wary of it.
Also, keep a backup of your device’s data before we head into this guide.
Without further a do, let’s get hopping with the guide. Shall we?
01 | Enabling Mi Unlock Status
Enabling the Mi Unlock Status is pretty easy. Given that you how a Mi account logged into your device, you should head over to the Settings menu and find ‘About Phone’ and tap the ‘MIUI Version (For POCO)’ seven times or until you see ‘No Need, you are already a developer’
Then proceed back into the settings menu, head over to ‘Additional Settings’ and then to ‘Developer Options’
Once you’re here, enable ‘OEM unlocking’ and then proceed to ‘Mi Unlock Status’. Once you’ve tapped on ‘Mi Unlock Status’ agree to the few warnings it displays to you and then tap on ‘Add account and device’. Once you see that it says ‘Added Successfully, Mi Account is associated with this device now’, power off your device.
02 | Getting The Tools Ready
Now that we could keep the device aside for now, let’s get the tools ready. For this, you’ll need.
- Mi Unlock – Download the latest version from the official website only.
- Drivers (Often included within the Mi Unlock Package)
- Mi Account Login Credentials
Once you’ve downloaded the Mi Unlock Tool, you might notice that you’ve just downloaded a zip/rar package. Extract the contents of the package wherever you please on your computer and boot your device into Fastboot mode.
On the Pocophone F1, to boot into fastboot mode, while the device is off, turn the device on by holding the power and volume down key at the same time until the fastboot screen appears.
Once your device has booted into fastboot, now’s a good time to plug in your device into your computer via a USB cable and start getting the drivers installed.
Now that you have the contents from the Mi Unlock tool extracted, simply look for a program called ‘MiUsbDriver’ and run it. It should automatically start installing the necessary drivers for your device. However, if it hasn’t started installing the drivers yet, simply re-plug the device into your computer.
03 | Finally Getting The Device Unlocked
Now that everything’s ready, get your Mi Account Login Credentials. Open ‘MiFlashUnlock’ from the Mi Unlock’s extracted contents and login with your login credentials. Do note that both, your device and Mi Unlock tool have to use the same account to unlock.
Once you’ve logged in, the Unlock Button should be enabled and you should start proceeding to the unlocking process. Wait for about 10 minutes you should you be greeted with a joy on your face saying that your bootloader has been unlocked.
Should an error occur, do let us know and we’ll find a solution. However, if it does trigger a 72 hours cooldown error, don’t worry and wait for three full days before trying again.
Now that you have your device unlocked, you should now be able to soar through all of the custom ROMs and tweaks that are available for your device. If this did help you, definitely let us know. We’d love to hear your feedback and experiences.
