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The Redmi K50i in India ships with the Google phone app. Call recording is not there the way you want it, and the dialer is not the MIUI one you were used to on earlier Xiaomi phones. The fix people reach for is flashing a China MIUI build over the Indian one.

Scary sounding. It is not that bad. The whole job is a fastboot flash with Mi Flash Tool, and the only genuinely dangerous part is a single check box most people never read.

Let me also be honest about what you trade. Going China means losing some India-specific apps and services, and possibly having to reinstall Google apps. If the MIUI dialer matters more to you than those, this is the trade you are making.

What you need

• A Redmi K50i with an unlocked bootloader. There is no way around this — the unlock wipes the phone, so do it first.
• A Windows PC with Mi Flash Tool installed.
• The Xiaomi fastboot drivers installed, so the PC actually sees the phone in fastboot.
• The China MIUI fastboot package that matches your K50i. This must be the fastboot build, not the recovery zip.
• A decent USB cable. Not the free one from a power bank.
• Battery at 60% or more, and a backup sitting on the PC.

Step 1 — back up everything first

Do this before anything else. Photos, chats, documents, the lot. A China flash with a clean-all wipes internal storage completely, and there is no undoing it. Get your data onto the PC and confirm it actually copied.

Step 2 — power off and boot to fastboot

Power the phone off completely. Then hold Volume Down and Power until the fastboot screen appears. You will see the logo and text, not MIUI. That is fastboot, and it is what Mi Flash Tool needs.

Step 3 — confirm the PC sees the device

Plug the phone into the PC and check that it is recognised in fastboot. If Mi Flash Tool shows nothing, or Windows shows an unknown device, stop and fix the driver. Flashing with a half-recognised device is how you get a soft brick that could have been avoided in five minutes.

Step 4 — extract the China ROM and point the tool at it

Extract the China ROM package into a folder you can find again. Extract it properly — with 7-Zip or WinRAR — so the folder structure stays intact. Then in Mi Flash Tool, browse to that extracted folder. The tool points at the folder, not at the zip.

If the tool complains about the folder, the extraction flattened the structure. Re-extract it and try again.

Step 5 — select clean all. Never clean all and lock

This is the whole reason this article exists. At the bottom of Mi Flash Tool you get a choice. Pick clean all. Do not pick clean all and lock.

Clean all flashes the ROM and wipes the data. Clean all and lock does that *and* re-locks the bootloader — which means you just gave away a bootloader unlock you waited a week for, and now you cannot flash anything until you unlock again from scratch.

Read that option every single time. It is a small radio button and a very expensive mistake.

Step 6 — flash, hands off

Hit flash and then leave it alone. Do not yank the cable, do not close the tool, do not pick the phone up to see if it is alive. A cheap cable or a flaky USB hub dropping the connection mid-flash is how soft bricks happen. Watch the progress, and wait for the success message.

Step 7 — let the first boot settle

The phone reboots into the China build. First boot takes a few minutes — longer than a normal boot, because the whole system was just written. Let it finish, then go through setup.

What actually changes

• The MIUI dialer replaces the Google phone app, and call recording comes back.
• India-specific apps and services usually do not ship on the China build.
• Google apps may need a clean re-install, so plan for that before you flash.

Where people get stuck

• Picking clean all and lock. The single most common disaster on this job. It re-locks the bootloader and you have to start the unlock wait again.
• A cheap cable or a bad hub. The connection drops mid-flash and you end up unbootable. Use a cable you trust and a rear USB port.
• Jumping from India to China without wiping. Settings and services behave strangely when old data survives a region change. Clean all exists for a reason.

If the driver side of this is the part that stalls you, the free Rom Flasher tool on GitHub wraps the ADB and fastboot driver install into a couple of clicks so you are not digging through Device Manager. It is free, and the link sits in the downloads section.

Full description from the video

Here's the short version. If you want the MIUI dialer back on a Redmi K50i that shipped with the Google phone app, you flash a China MIUI build over the Indian one. It sounds scary. It really isn't, as long as you keep your hands off the wrong check box.

📱 Device : Redmi K50i

🧩 ROM : China MIUI build

🛠️ What You Need

• Redmi K50i with an unlocked bootloader — there's no way around this step
• A Windows PC with the Mi Flash Tool and the Xiaomi fastboot drivers installed
• The China MIUI fastboot package that matches your K50i
• A good USB cable, not the one that came free with a power bank
• 60% battery or more, and a backup sitting on your PC

📝 Steps

1. Back up everything first. Photos, chats, documents, the lot.
2. Power the phone off, then hold volume down + power to reach fastboot.
3. Plug it in and confirm the PC actually sees the device.
4. Extract the China ROM and point the flash tool at that folder.
5. Select clean all. Never clean all and lock.
6. Flash, and don't yank the cable until it says done.
7. Let the first boot settle for a few minutes. It takes its time.

⚠️ Where People Get Stuck

• Picking "clean all and lock" and re-locking a bootloader that took a week to unlock.
• A cheap cable or a flaky USB hub dropping the connection mid-flash. That's how soft bricks happen.
• Jumping from the India build to the China build without wiping data. Settings behave strangely after that.

🔍 What Actually Changes

• The MIUI dialer replaces the Google phone app and call recording comes back.
• India-specific apps and services usually don't ship on the China build.
• Google apps may need a clean re-install, so plan for that before you flash.

Common questions

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