Part of Xiaomi guides, 2023 guides.

Here is the thing about flashing a GSI on the 11T Pro. You are not replacing Android. You are replacing one partition — the system partition — and leaving your vendor and kernel exactly where they are. That is the deal, and once you accept it, everything about this flash makes sense.

Bliss OS for Android 13 ships as a phh-treble style generic system image. The good part: nothing is listed as broken inside the ROM itself. The trade: how the camera, calls and sensors behave is your vendor's job, not the ROM's.

What you actually need

• An unlocked bootloader. There is no way around this, and unlocking wipes the phone the first time.
• The Bliss OS Android 13 GSI for your device. ARM64 AB and A64 AB are both published.
• The vbmeta file for your phone, so you can disable verity and verification.
• Platform tools on your PC.
• A custom recovery, because the last step is a data wipe from recovery.
• A recent vendor and kernel on the phone. Older vendor blobs are where the camera complaints come from.

Step 1 — get the right image and the right build type

Grab the Bliss OS Android 13 GSI. Two architecture variants are out: ARM64 AB and A64 AB. The 11T Pro is a 64-bit device, and you will almost always want the ARM64 AB image here.

On the build type: GApps and slim are what is available. Vanilla is not published for this one, so plan for Google apps being present. If you wanted a Google-free system, this is not the release that gives you one.

Step 2 — boot to fastbootd, not plain fastboot

Power the phone off, hold Volume Down and Power to reach the bootloader, plug in the cable, and confirm the PC sees it:

fastboot devices

You should get a serial number back with the word fastboot next to it. No serial number means a driver problem, and nothing later in this guide will work until you fix that.

Then move into fastbootd:

fastboot reboot fastboot

This matters. The system partition can only be erased and written in fastbootd. If you try the next steps in the plain bootloader, the commands fail.

Step 3 — flash vbmeta first, with both flags

This is the step people skip and it is the one that decides whether the phone boots.

fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta

Both flags matter. Verification is what stops a modified system image from booting. Leave it on and the phone rejects your GSI at boot with errors you cannot recover from without a PC. Flash the vbmeta for your phone before anything else.

Step 4 — erase system, then flash the GSI

fastboot erase system

fastboot flash system

The image is large, so this takes a minute or two and prints progress. Let it finish. Do not unplug the cable, and do not close the window.

One small reassurance: a stalled-looking flash is usually just a slow USB port, not a brick. Give it a full two minutes before you assume anything went wrong.

Step 5 — wipe data before the first boot

fastboot reboot recovery

In Mi Recovery, wipe data. This is not optional and it is not just housekeeping. The old userdata is encrypted with keys from the old system, so a new system partition plus old userdata is the classic GSI bootloop. Wipe it, reboot, and the first boot takes a while.

What a GSI can and cannot fix

This is where expectations go wrong, so let me be blunt.

• It cannot fix the camera. GSI camera quality follows your vendor blob. If the vendor image on your phone is old, the photos will show it, and no GSI on the planet changes that.
• It cannot fix calls or sensors. Same story. Modem behaviour, fingerprint, proximity, all vendor side.
• It can give you a clean, modern Android 13 base. That part is genuinely good here, and the ROM side is documented and stable.

If your vendor is recent, you will wonder what the fuss is about. If it is old, you will notice within an hour.

Where this usually goes wrong

• Skipping the vbmeta flags. Without --disable-verity --disable-verification, the GSI will not boot.
• Flashing system in plain bootloader instead of fastbootd. The command fails, or the partition never gets written.
• Skipping the data wipe. Old userdata plus a new system equals a bootloop, every time.
• Blaming the ROM for hardware. Camera, calls and sensors come from your vendor and kernel on a GSI.

After the first boot

Set the phone up, let it settle for ten minutes, then start using it. If something hardware-related is off, that is your vendor talking, not the ROM. A recent vendor plus a current kernel is the answer there.

If the driver and platform tools side of this is the annoying part, the free Rom Flasher tool on GitHub installs the ADB and fastboot drivers in a couple of clicks so you are not fighting Device Manager. It is free, and the link sits in the downloads section.

One last thing. Turn off automatic system updates for a while. An OTA on a GSI can overwrite what you just flashed, and then you are doing this whole evening again.

Full description from the video

Bliss OS on Android 13 as a GSI on the Xiaomi 11T Pro — the fastboot install, the exact build to grab, and what a Treble image can and can't do on this phone.

Bliss OS ships as a generic system image here, phh-treble based, so the ROM is the portable part and your vendor and kernel decide how the hardware behaves. The good news is the image side is clean — there are no ROM bugs listed at all, which says a lot about how much work went into this one.

📱 Device : Xiaomi 11T Pro

🧩 ROM : Bliss OS (GSI, phh-treble)

🤖 Android : 13

👤 Credits : @Naz664

🔬 What You Get

• Android 13 as a GSI — ARM64 AB and A64 AB images are both published.
• GApps and slim builds are available. Vanilla is not, so plan for that.
• SELinux works in both modes here, enforcing and permissive.
• No bugs reported inside the ROM. On the device side it depends on your vendor and kernel.

🛠️ Install Order

1. fastboot reboot fastboot
2. fastboot --disable-verity --disable-verification flash vbmeta
3. fastboot erase system
4. fastboot flash system
5. fastboot reboot recovery
6. Wipe data in Mi Recovery
7. Reboot and done

📊 Verdict

This is one of the friendlier GSIs to start with, purely because the ROM side is stable and documented. What you should not expect is a stock-like camera. GSI camera quality is downstream of your vendor, and if your vendor blob is old, photos will show it. Get vbmeta right and wipe data at the end and it boots without drama. Skip either of those and you'll spend the evening staring at a boot animation.

Common questions

More for Xiaomi 11T Pro