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  • Official fix

Xiaomi doesn’t have the strongest presence in the Android One space, while most of its popular handsets run a heavily customized (and better supported) software skin. The Chinese company has a habit of running into trouble when updating its Mi A-series phones with the latest Android builds,sometimes causing more problems than they fix in the first place. Hot on the heels of the Mi A3 fiasco just last week, a new Android 10 update for Mi A2 Lite is similarly up to no good, with word of it bricking handsets.

Through its official community forum, Xiaomi announced that it’s rolling out Android 10 to the Mi A2 Lite in a phased manner. Many who received the update began swarming the forum's comment box and Reddit to report how their Mi A2 Lites won’t turn on after the update was installed, while for others, the phone is stuck in a boot loop. One saving grace is that this was just a partial release, which prevented the broken update from reaching a broader userbase and being more damaging.

There are some reports from users who did install the update on their Mi A2 Lite without issue, but this could be related to a particular memory configuration of the phone, and we don’t have enough information to pinpoint the cause right now.

A Redditor and an XDA forum thread suggest some ways to fix the bricked phones involving the fastboot utility, but we advise against going for these methods unless you know exactly what you’re doing. If you still haven’t updated your Mi A2 Lite, then it’s best to avoid the Android 10 update, in case it still hits your device. Those who are already facing the issue are just going to have to wait for official word from Xiaomi.

UPDATE: 2020/03/11 6:02am PDT BY KARANDEEP SINGH

Official fix

Some users have suggested that the update’s rollout has been paused after numerous reports of broken Mi A2 Lites came in (via PuinikaWeb). A senior moderator on Mi’s forum acknowledged the issue and suggested a fix for the affected units, which involves switching to an untouched A/B partition that should have a working system image to rollback to. The entire process has been detailed in this forum thread. There is no update on when the fixed Android 10 version will be released for the Mi A2 Lite.

UPDATE: 2020/04/20 5:11am PDT BY KARANDEEP SINGH

Fixed version rolling out

After a somewhat bumpy ride, Xiaomi is rolling out a fixed version of the Android 10 update for its budget Mi A2 Lite Android One phone. To avoid sending another borked update out to a large number of users, the company tested the waters last week with a limited release, following which, the update now appears to be hitting more units globally. A bunch of people took to Reddit and Twitter to confirm the availability.

Most users who got the new build v11.0.4.0.QDLMIXM, including those affected during the first rollout phase, have confirmed that the update works as expected, and they haven’t faced any major issues thus far. Meanwhile, some Mi A2 Lite owners did encounter a couple of minor problems like reduced battery life, which the company says can be resolved with a clean install. Others reported a few bugs that appeared after installing the latest version. Hopefully, Xiaomi will address them in a future release.

Source: Mi forum, Reddit (1), (2), (3), XDA forum

Thanks: Nuno G.