@aimar It should just be a one week (168 hour, they'll say) wait.
I can't confirm what @kln_nurv said exactly, but it does kinda fit with my experience.
I bought a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro from the EU for delivery in Canada. I made a Xiaomi account, synced it to the phone, waited 168 days, but where it failed was as part of something Xiaomi called SIM sync or something similar. There was supposed to be a verification SMS from Xiaomi. This would never be received, and SIM Sync / SIM Activation would fail.
Then when I'd try Mi Unlock Tool even after 7 days, it would say the phone isn't "Activated".
A few emails with Xiaomi and a couple calls with my cellular carrier later, I gave up.
The best they could come up with at the time is that "short-code SMS", the type commonly used for 2FA, wasn't coming through maybe because either Xiaomi didn't have servers in Canada, or because it wasn't in its original market. They said short-code SMS don't work internationally. None of this made very much sense to me.
So I dunno, it's possible it now only works from within China.
I still have the phone. I will try to find time to make a new Xiaomi account via a Proton VPN server in Hong Kong and see if that works.. best I can do.
Any recent reports from others unlocking Xiaomi devices could be helpful. This was in 2026 that I was trying. Clearly people succeeded at this in the past. But anybody done so this year?
