Looking for community wisdom - mi note 3 stuck and need to recover data

[Guillemmat]

Hi,

I have a mi note 3, with global ROM. Yesterday, it received an OTA upgrade to 10.4.2.0, and immediately after the install, when the phone booted, it started showing errors about Find My device crashing. I managed to enable developer mode (this phone was unrooted and stock recovery with locked bootloader) and using adb I could stop the find my device crash by removing the package (so it wouldn't reboot) and backup about half of its contents. It did reboot though, and then It just would not boot at all to the system and would just keep boot looping (i never got the home screen).

Having tried a few things with ADB, I decided to do something a bit more drastic and I used ADB sideload to install the same ROM again using the recovery mi assistant option. That worked but still the phone wouldn't boot, so I decided to erase user-data (which according to the xiaomiadb does remove all apps but not pictures and all other stuff). Then the phone did boot, but It got stuck again, this time on the android setup screen where it says something like 'wait a second while we setup your device...' and getting again the same error about Find My Device crashing.

Is there any hope on recovering the data in the phone? I had two ideas but I have no idea if they are stupid or if they have any chance of working:

1-. Unlock bootloader using the Xiaomi app, in fastboot, but instead of rebooting, after unlocking using fastboot to load twrp and then trying to save the data via twrp
2-. Wait for another global rom update, apply that via recovery and see if it does fix the issue with Find My Device

Is any of those ideas realistic? If not, is there any chance to save the data from the phone? even if it implies opening it and so?

Thanks!

 

[dpikros]

The first option seems extremely risky, unlocking the bootloader will format all data - maybe before reboot. The second needs patience, most probably that was the last miui 10 stable. Don't you have a miui account? Most of your stuff is there, you could login from your browser and check it out.

 

[Guillemmat]

Thanks dpikros. Yes, I have access to the mi account, but I never trusted mi cloud with my data, so I had all sync to mi cloud disabled unfortunately.

I tried installing the previous MIUI, but it's based on Android 8.1 and the sideload won't allow me to use it. I think same will happen with developer ROM.

Does anybody know if the data format happens before or after reboot when unlocking? I was thinking, unlock bootloader and then use fastboot to boot the twrp image (without even flashing it) but not sure if the Xiaomi unlock app will automatically reboot the phone or if it will somehow delete if from unlock directly.

Thanks