Last month, we spotted variants of the Redmi Note 5 and Note 5 Pro on Geekbench running on Android 9 Pie. From the looks of it, Xiaomi has now confirmed the rollout of Google’s latest mobile OS to Redmi Note 5 Pro, Mi 6X, Redmi S2 and Redmi 6 Pro, all of which now run on Android 8.1 Oreo.
The update comes from a post on the MIUI forum which revealed that Xiaomi will be seeding internal beta updates based on Android 9 Pie for the Redmi Note 5 Pro, Mi 6X, Redmi S2 and Redmi 6 Pro. The company is currently recruiting beta testers for Android Pie and will likely start rolling out a stable build for all users before the end of first quarter of 2019.
Android 9 Pie will be the second major Android update being rolled out to the Redmi Note 5 Pro (labelled as Redmi Note 5 in China) which came running Android 7.1.2 Nougat when it was launched. The Mi 6X, Redmi S2 and Redmi 6 Pro, all, however, came running Android 8.1 Oreo and it’s the first time Xiaomi is rolling out a major update to these three smartphones.
The latest development has been confirmed for all the Chinese variants of the listed devices but we can expect variants out of China to receive Android 9 Pie in the near future. This means users of the Redmi Y2 (Redmi S2 in China) and Redmi Note 5 Pro (Redmi Note 5 in China) will soon be able to enjoy the latest features from Android Pie on their smartphones. The Redmi 6 Pro and Mi 6X already run Android Pie since these devices are sold as Android One smartphones namely the Mi A2 Lite and Mi A2 outside of China.
Until now, Xiaomi has rolled out the Android 9 Pie update to the Mi Mix 3, Mi 8 and Poco F1 smartphones. The Chinese manufacturer is currently hosting sign-up pages for users to take part in the internal beta program soon after which stable updates can be expected to release for the listed smartphones. Apart from the listed phones, we can also expect Android 9 Pie to come to the Redmi Note 6 Pro and Redmi Note 6 and a new MIUI 11 interface in the next few months.