i flashed derpfest on my 11t pro and yeah, it was worth it

so i actually did it. flashed derpfest android 16 on my xiaomi 11t pro, the phone i actually use every day, not some backup unit i keep around for testing. and honestly? it went way smoother than i expected.

the good stuff

the ui is just chef's kiss. material 3 expressive on derpfest feels less like "here's stock android with a skin slapped on" and more like someone actually sat down and thought about how the animations and layouts should feel together. i know i already gushed about material 3 expressive in a previous post, but using it daily instead of just admiring it from a distance is a different experience entirely. it's genuinely one of the best things to happen to android in a while.

battery life is better too. not "oh maybe i'm imagining it" better, actually noticeably better. and basically every app i use works fine. the one casualty is google wallet, which, yeah, i knew that going in. play integrity and custom roms don't mix, that's just the tax you pay. not a big deal for me, i wasn't using tap to pay religiously anyway.

the one hiccup

the only real snag was partitions. the 11t pro uses a newer setup than the phones i've flashed roms on before, and i ran into some a/b slot confusion during the process. nothing that stopped me, just something i hadn't dealt with on older devices, so i had to actually slow down and figure out which slot i was working with before doing anything else. if you're coming from an older device and this is your first time dealing with a/b partitioning, don't just assume you know what's active, check first.

would i do it again

yeah, obviously, i'm writing this from the phone right now. this is genuinely one of the better flashing experiences i've had. smooth rom, good ui, real battery gains, and the only tradeoff was one that i already accepted before i even started. can't really ask for more than that.