[Android 10] Current status of GSI

guglicap

Senior Member
Apr 1, 2017
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Hello there,

while we wait for the development of AOSP Android Q ROMs I wanted to make a central hub for discussion related to Android Q GSI by phh, which is the only option we have right now to run an AOSP Q system.
It's also kind of a guide since the GSI doesn't boot out of the box when using the Q vendor by xiaomi.eu, so here's how to boot it.

1. Flash xiaomi.eu 9.10.24+ which is based on android Q. You should be able to get it to boot on your own, if it doesn't I'm sorry but this guide is not about that. One tip, you need to use an up-to-date TWRP, I used 3.3.1-1024 which you can find in the forum.
2. Reboot to recovery
3. Factory reset
4. Mount vendor in recovery and delete the last line of /vendor/etc/selinux/vendor_sepolicy.cil "(allow zygote_28_0 dalvikcache_data_file_28_0 (file (execute)))". The GSI will not boot if you skip this step.
5. Flash the latest Android Q GSI from phhusson's github releases page. It needs to be A/B (yes that's right) and arm64, so it will be something like system-quack-arm64-ab-vanilla.img. You can also use the gapps variant.

If nothing goes wrong the phone should successfully boot to Android 10.
It's stable (no crashes or anything) but I already found a couple bugs which make it unusuable for me, like alarms and notifications are silent (multimedia is fine), screen casting doesn't work and although I'm not entirely sure it was the GSI fault but cellular data felt quite slow.

I've also decided to write this post because it would be ideal if someone who feels like playing around with the phone a bit, or has a spare sirius will try booting the GSI off of Chinese vendor from here.
I know that in the past it used to be the case that xiaomi.eu vendors were more GSI-friendly, though I've checked and the Chinese vendor doesn't have the SELinux problem described above. Also it would be ideal because if we want any help from phh with fixing bugs it would be better to follow his guidelines about using OEM vendors.

Thank you all and let's get Android 10 running nicely on this phone :)