2018’s Pocophone F1 literary changed the smartphone industry. Although the formula was nothing new, Xiaomi’s participation in the budget flagship race redefined the tactics followed by Android OEMs to penetrate different market segments.

poco_f1_front_back
Poco F1: Flagship performance under pocket friendly price tag

People are craving for the successor to the phone, but the marketing wing of Xiaomi planned something else. Redmi, now an independent brand, launched the Redmi K20 series. Judging from the specs and MSRP, they follow the footsteps of the Pocophone F1.

Later on, the Chinese OEM decided to bring Redmi K20 as Mi 9T in select European markets. PiunikaWeb also confirmed the identicalities between two devices by examining their firmware packages.

redmi_k20_front_back_colors
Redmi K20 / Mi 9T

Interestingly, both Redmi K20 and K20 Pro (the latter is powered by Snapdragon 855 SoC instead of Snapdragon 730) are going to be available in India without the Mi moniker on and from tomorrow, July 17. Xiaomi called them ‘Flagship Killer 2.0’, by mocking (?) OnePlus.

redmi_flagship_killer_2.0_manu_tweet

Like most of their recent lineup of phones, Xiaomi decided to maintain separate firmware for different regional variants of Redmi K20/Mi 9T. Apart from the Chinese and European packages, the Indian firmware is now available for download – just before official release!

The build number of the first Indian firmware for Redmi K20 is V10.3.3.0.PFJINXM which is considerably older than Chinese (V10.3.9.0.PFJCNXM), European (V10.3.8.0.PFJEUXM) or even the global MIUI build (V10.3.7.0.PFJMIXM) for the phone.

redmi_k20_mi_9t_india_10.3.3.0_forum
Source

While other regional variants of Mi 9T already got June security patches, it is absent on the current Indian firmware of Redmi K20. Hopefully Xiaomi will roll out a day-one OTA update to bring new monthly security patches along with MIUI specific features to the phone after the official release.

Thanks to my friend yshalsager and the Xiaomi Firmware Updater project, the download links are as follows:

  • Device: Redmi K20 / Mi 9T
  • Codename: davinci
  • Channel: India Stable
  • Version: V10.3.3.0.PFJINXM
  • Android: 9.0
    • Type: Recovery
      • Download: Link
      • MD5: 599f996c8b49474395d04d8afbb60f8e
    • Type: Fastboot
      • Download: Link
      • MD5: 95bf3310b35b1cf5510b358cfa1f9349

While there is no indication of such regional firmware builds for Redmi K20 Pro (aka Mi 9T Pro) yet, Poco F1 may be available via Amazon India in near future. Is this another indication of the arrival of Pocophone F2 on Amazon, as Flipkart is exclusively carrying the Redmi K20 series?

poco_f1_amazon_india_alvin_tweet
Source

Do you think Xiaomi is still going to launch Poco F2? Comment below.

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Kingshuk De
896 Posts

I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.

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