How to go back from UT 16.04 to Android?

acompleteidiot

Hi,

the title says it all. How do I turn on the USB debugging on UT? What needs to be done and how before I flash Android?

acompleteidiot

As I suspected, "Flashing is not allowed for Critical Partitions" after my short affair with UT. How to enable flashing Android again?

acompleteidiot

Seems "fastboot unlock critical" did the job.

acompleteidiot

Unfortunately, the phone still does not work well after I flash Android. Wi-Fi does not work and everything lags.

Any suggestions please?

MrT10001

@acompleteidiot Did you use the MiFlash tool? It is the only way to get back to Android on an Xiaomi device. DO NOT LOCK THE BOOTLOADER, there is a great chance you will brick the device.

acompleteidiot

@MrT10001 Thanks for your reply.

No, I'm on Linux.

I flashed it using the fastboot prompts in the terminal.

MrT10001

@acompleteidiot You need a windows pc and the MiFlash tool to get back to Android. It won't work manually flashing on Linux.

sompe

@acompleteidiot Hi. I am new on forum. I use Xiaomi Adb Fastboot Tools on Linux Mint. On Mi A2 (Ubuntu Touch 16.04) enabled developer mode. Switched the phone to fastboot mode. Flashed MIUI ROM with Xiaomi Adb Fastboot Tools. Everything works fine. (sorry for my english)

acompleteidiot

@sompe said in How to go back from UT 16.04 to Android?:

@acompleteidiot Hi. I am new on forum. I use Xiaomi Adb Fastboot Tools on Linux Mint. On Mi A2 (Ubuntu Touch 16.04) enabled developer mode. Switched the phone to fastboot mode. Flashed MIUI ROM with Xiaomi Adb Fastboot Tools. Everything works fine. (sorry for my english)

Your English is fine. Thank you. Puffing and huffing, I eventually managed to get it to work, wi-fi included. I'm also new.

@MrT10001 said in How to go back from UT 16.04 to Android?:

@acompleteidiot You need a windows pc and the MiFlash tool to get back to Android. It won't work manually flashing on Linux.

I got it to work eventually, but not without the "fastboot flashing unlock_critical" command. Both on Windows using the MiFlash tool and Linux, flashing was not allowed on critical partitions. It was quite a nuisance, but all good in the end. Thank you.

acompleteidiot

Final summary:

So, my experience counters some of what I have been told by the fellow Linuxheads.

You actually do not need the MiFlash tool to succesfully flash Android back.
No matter whether I used the MiFlash tool or manual fastboot commands in Linux terminal/Windows cmd, the result was frustratingly samey: Going back from Linux, Android 9 made the Wi-Fi unaccessible.
The good news is, Android 10 -- again, no matter how I flashed it -- didn't bring around the same trouble. Alas, Android 10 was the reason Mi A2 got significantly slower in early 2020, so I still wanted to go back to Pie.
If you struggle with the same set of circumstances, there is a hope! I flashed Oreo (which, just like A10, caused not troubles) and updated to Pie from there.

Hopefully this may help someone some day!