This 9-Year-Old Xiaomi Is Already Running HyperOS 4

Xiaomi started testing HyperOS 4 just two days ago, but the community is already doing what it does best. Chinese developers have managed to port the new software to the Xiaomi Mi 6, a phone that launched all the way back in 2017. Even better, some of the biggest HyperOS 4 features appear to be working on it.

Yes, we're talking about the same Mi 6 that originally shipped with MIUI 8 and Android 7.1. Xiaomi stopped supporting the phone years ago, but that clearly hasn't stopped developers from keeping it alive.

The Xiaomi Mi 6 was a proper flagship when it arrived in 2017. It came with the Snapdragon 835, up to 6GB of RAM and a small 5.15-inch IPS display. There was also a dual 12MP camera on the back and a 3,350mAh battery.

Those specs were great nine years ago, but they are obviously far behind what Xiaomi uses today. HyperOS 4 is made with much newer hardware in mind, which makes this port much more interesting than it may sound.

According to the report, developers have already managed to get features such as Soft Light Glass and Dynamic Island working on the Mi 6. The phone is not just booting into HyperOS 4 with half the interface broken. At least some of the new visual features are actually running on this old hardware.

To be honest, I didn't expect to see HyperOS 4 running on a Snapdragon 835 phone this soon.

Here's the thing, though. Xiaomi has nothing to do with this port. The Mi 6 is not on the official HyperOS 4 device list, and there is no chance Xiaomi will suddenly bring official support back to a phone from 2017.

This is a custom ROM made by the community, so installing it comes with the usual risks. We also don't know how stable the current build is or which parts of the phone still don't work. The original report doesn't give us enough information about battery life, cameras or daily performance to judge whether the ROM is ready for normal use.

HyperOS 4 only entered beta testing on August 14, and developers already have it running on hardware that is almost a decade old. Xiaomi's official rollout is focused on much newer phones and tablets, as you would expect.

I have always liked projects like this. They show that old hardware doesn't always become useless just because official software support ends.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend digging out an old Mi 6 and installing this ROM on your main phone. A nine-year-old battery alone would probably give me enough reasons to think twice. But as a community project, seeing HyperOS 4 running on a phone that launched with MIUI 8 is quite impressive.

And there is something funny about the whole thing. Some much newer Xiaomi phones will never get HyperOS 4 officially, while a group of developers has already put it on the Xiaomi Mi 6.

Sometimes the Android community simply refuses to let a good phone die. And for a good reason this time.