My Redmi Note 3 is almost a year old, and I have to admit, I haven't used the bloated and ugly MIUI for more than a month. I have been using Cyanogenmod ever since I unlocked the bootloader.
The first CM rom I used was CM 7.1 by Mik_OS for the LG Optimus One P500, back in 2011. Fast forward 6 years, and you can bet I have used Cyanogenmod on every phone I have owned.
When Cyanogen Inc announced that it was going to shut down, it was hard to believe. That combined with the end of a Nexus line, for a Nexus6/7 user like me, was a huge dissapointment. When LineageOS was announced as the replacement for Cyanogenmod, I didn't expect it to come out so soon, especially for the Redmi Note 3. I'm truly grateful, that it did though. More so, because, Xiaomi is in no hurry to update its phone to Nougat, but we don't have to wait for them do we?
Thanks to LineageOS 14.1, you can have Android 7.1 Nougat on the Redmi Note 3 right now.
DISCLAIMER:
Geekiest and the author are not responsible for any damage or data loss you incur. Proceed at your own risk.
Always take a backup of your data and save it to your SD card, or your PC.
Pre-Requisites:
1. Nougat Firmware - MIUI-7.1.12-FIRMWARE.zip. This is a mandatory requirement for flashing Nougat.
2. TWRP - We recommend the official one.
3. LineageOS 14.1 ROM
4. Minimal Fastboot and ADB (for flashing TWRP)
5. Google USB Drivers/Mi Flash tool for the USB drivers.
6. Redmi Note 3 with unlocked bootloader. Enable USB debugging by tapping on the build number from the About phone screen, and then enabling the toggle from the Developer options.
7. OpenGAPPs (ARM64 Android 7.1). We recommend using the Pico.
8. Copy the Firmware, ROM and GAPPS zip files to your SD CARD.
9. Optional: Supersu addon for root. We used Magisk + Magisk Manager app because it has a root hider.
How to install the latest TWRP on the Redmi Note 3
1. Download the TWRP image and copy it to the same folder where Minimal Fastboot and ADB is installed.
2. Hold Shift and right click in the folder, and open a command prompt window there.
3. Switch off the phone. Then, press and hold the volume down and power button, to put the phone in Fastboot mode. Connect it to the PC via a USB cable.
4. Type the following command in the window:
fastboot flash recovery twrp-3.0.2-2-kenzo.img
5. Wait for it to finish. Proceed with the next set of instructions.
How to install LineageOS 14.1 on the Redmi Note 3
1. Type the following command in the ADB command prompt window, to reboot to the new recovery. You can also use it for temporarilty booting TWRP without flashing it.
fastboot boot twrp-3.0.2-2-kenzo.img
2. Now, tap on Wipe and then on factory reset.
3. Select dalvik, system, data & cache partitions. This will erase your internal storage. So make sure you take a backup of your data beforehand.
4. Go back to TWRP's main menu, and tap on install.
5. Add the firmware zip (MIUI-7.1.12-FIRMWARE.zip)
6. Tap on add more zips and select the ROM zip to the queue. (lineage-14.1-20170213-nightly-kenzo-signed.zip)
7. Tap on add more zips and select the GAPPs zip to the queue. (open_gapps-arm64-7.1-pico-20170214.zip)
8. Start the install by swiping across the button. It will flash the three zip files. so wait for it to finish and boot into the OS. It may take a few minutes for it to complete.
Remember to root by flashing supersu or magisk.
We have tested it for about 12-15 hours and it seems fine. Fingerprint scanner,4G LTE data, VoLTE, Dual SIM, SD Card, Wi-Fi, etc work fine. The camera app was a bit buggy, so we recommend using OpenCamera or Google Camera.
Notes:
twrp-3.0.2-1.img did not work for me. It kept giving me an error which said failed to mount 'cache' operation not supported on transport endpoint. I fixed it by using the official TWRP, and then converting my cache partition from f2fs to ext4, which then worked perfectly. Twrp-3.0.M4-0.img works with f2fs for CM 13, but newer ROMs and TWRP don't seem to support it.
This process was tested on a Redmi Note 3 which had Cyanogemod 13 on it. But it should work on any Redmi Note 3 with an unlocked bootloader.