Xiaomi’s first Android TV box has yet to receive an official build of Android 7.0 Nougat, but the XDA Developers community has now managed to dig up a beta build of the update, show the ng progress that Xiaomi made with the software so far and how well the new operating system runs on the device. With this being an early beta build, there are a few bugs in the OS, but a good number of optimizations and new features are also supported by the software. It is worth noting that there seem to be two different versions of this build; one version, uploaded by XDA user “rhinotank,” weighs in at 460MB, while the other is a bit more mysterious, and can allegedly be obtained directly from XDA user “bigtalker” who made a post saying rhinotank’s upload wasn’t the real package, though that claim doesn’t seem to be accurate, as other users confirmed they can run the beta build without any issues.
Users on XDA Developers boards who are flashing the test builds and reporting back say some common bugs are plaguing the current OS version. Amid scattered reports of ethernet no longer working and random reboots, there seems to be a consensus on the build breaking automatic refresh rate switching, HDR in Netflix, HD Audio in version 17.1 of Kodi, and Dolby 5.1 passthrough. The new features, on the other hand, include standard Android TV tweaks and Nougat features like HDMI CEC customization and DVR function for live TV. Live channels also received the picture in picture mode, arguably the biggest single addition featured in the update.
The beta update seems to come with a small number of common bugs that most users should be able to live with if they really want the new features on offer. In order to flash the build, users will have to load it onto a USB flash drive, disconnect power to their unit, put in the flash drive, then hold down the button combination for recovery mode while booting the unit. A custom recovery and root are reportedly not needed. Users on the forum are cautioning that those choosing to flash the update should reset the system data before doing so, and to keep in mind that they won’t be able to go back to Android 6.0 Marshmallow.