parag1dubey
Android Enthusiast
Alright mates,
This is NOT a guide to the MIUI rom. I am nowhere close to being an expert on Roms or anything really as Ironass, Hawker, Syd etc will readily attest to (heck, they may even swear affidavits to that effect
). This is merely a record of my own first impressions of the MIUI rom which i flashed to my phone. I have found precious little about the MIUI rom on our forum and therefore i am recording this here for anyone who might be interested.
First things first. I had flashed the official Rom 2.11.9 downloaded from the official website (en.miui.com). The very first thing i noticed was that the interface is in Chinese language and so i had to (relying on the symbols) go to settings and change the language from there.
The best thing about Miui is that it is highly customizable. You have tons of themes to choose from. The Miui lockscreen is very well known as a thing of beauty and it truly is. You can choose from thousands of lockscreens, each with their own fancy effects and animations. Visually, the rom has more in common with iOS than android. There are many transitions to choose from, which are all pretty smooth. The notification pull down bar has two tabs, one for notifications and one for toggles. This is a pretty neat feature.
Now, the things which made me go back to my AOSP jelly bean rom.
1) Battery Life : All the fancy effects come with a price which we pay in battery life. This is the first Rom which i have tried in which the Android System was using more battery than the display! At one point, the battery drain was 30% per hour. One reason for this could be that Mihome which is the launcher on MIUI takes up battery independently apart from the OS itself, which means that the launcher is not part of the system, it is distinct from it. Contrast this with a Rom like Neatrom, where the Touchwiz launcher does not show up in the battery stats (settings-battery) as a separate item because it is a part and parcel of the OS itself.
2) Recovery: The official MIUI rom does not have the extremely convenient 4 way reboot option. This caused problems for me when I wanted to restore my previous rom from a backup. I had to install Rom manager, from which i rebooted into CWM and then restored.
3) Root permissions: Root permissions are a hassle on this rom. On AOSP or AOKP roms, when apps ask for root permissions, one can simply say yes or no. But in MIUI, the apps are disabled by default from asking for root permissions. These settings can be changed, of course but the system warns you several times trying to dissuade you from doing this. This is an added step and is as such unwelcome. A simple thing like doing a titanium backup can turn into a challenging task if you don't know where to look.
4) Lag: I had installed the MIUI rom after a full wipe and despite this I found that there was a noticeable lag at times. Sometimes the transitions stuttered and sometimes the apps took a tad too long to open.
5) Phone book: In every other rom i have tried, my contacts showed up immediately. However in MIUI, I had to manually import the contacts from the sim to the phone and even then the photos which i had assigned to contacts didnt show up.
6) Notifications: This was something I forgot the first time I wrote this post. By default, notifications from gmail, twitter or any app are hidden from the notification bar in the MIUI rom. I don't fully understand the reason for this since Notifications and the omnipresent pull down bar are a pivotal feature of android. What this means is whenever you get a new sms or email there is an audio alert when you receive a notification but when you pull down the notification bar, there is nothing there! In my case, the default notification sound was "wolf howl" and when i received notifications, there was only the wolf howl and nothing on the phone! I was half convinced I was about to turn into a hairy werewolf (not such a bad idea, is it?
) Jokes apart, it is a highly inconvenient and unreasonable decision to hide notifications on part of the developers. You have to turn off the hide notifications option from the settings menu and then it works normally.
7) Lockscreen Freezes: Another thing I forgot when writing the first time. Sometimes when you try to unlock the phone, you find that the lockscreen has simply frozen. You get no response whatsoever no matter how hard you try. But then the screen unlocks after a few seconds. Another thing is that if you push the power button (to turn off the screen) and then immediately push it again to turn it back on, you see your homescreen wallpaper for a while instead of going to the lockscreen immediately. This is annoying because you want to simply start using your phone rather than experiencing such lags.
Please understand, that all these complaints may be sorted out in future versions (MIUI updates every Friday as per user feedback). It may be that i have made some errors in settings or installation etc because of which the rom behaved this way. However, I have used other roms and i haven't come across any such difficulties.
For the aforementioned reasons, the MIUI rom isn't for me. Maybe it is for you though. Do give it a try and I hope that it runs well for you. If any MIUI user can comment on this and prove me wrong(and in the process, educate me on how to properly use this Rom) I will be grateful. Bear in mind that this is not an attack against the MIUI rom, merely my experience. Thank you for reading.
This is NOT a guide to the MIUI rom. I am nowhere close to being an expert on Roms or anything really as Ironass, Hawker, Syd etc will readily attest to (heck, they may even swear affidavits to that effect
). This is merely a record of my own first impressions of the MIUI rom which i flashed to my phone. I have found precious little about the MIUI rom on our forum and therefore i am recording this here for anyone who might be interested. First things first. I had flashed the official Rom 2.11.9 downloaded from the official website (en.miui.com). The very first thing i noticed was that the interface is in Chinese language and so i had to (relying on the symbols) go to settings and change the language from there.
The best thing about Miui is that it is highly customizable. You have tons of themes to choose from. The Miui lockscreen is very well known as a thing of beauty and it truly is. You can choose from thousands of lockscreens, each with their own fancy effects and animations. Visually, the rom has more in common with iOS than android. There are many transitions to choose from, which are all pretty smooth. The notification pull down bar has two tabs, one for notifications and one for toggles. This is a pretty neat feature.
Now, the things which made me go back to my AOSP jelly bean rom.
1) Battery Life : All the fancy effects come with a price which we pay in battery life. This is the first Rom which i have tried in which the Android System was using more battery than the display! At one point, the battery drain was 30% per hour. One reason for this could be that Mihome which is the launcher on MIUI takes up battery independently apart from the OS itself, which means that the launcher is not part of the system, it is distinct from it. Contrast this with a Rom like Neatrom, where the Touchwiz launcher does not show up in the battery stats (settings-battery) as a separate item because it is a part and parcel of the OS itself.
2) Recovery: The official MIUI rom does not have the extremely convenient 4 way reboot option. This caused problems for me when I wanted to restore my previous rom from a backup. I had to install Rom manager, from which i rebooted into CWM and then restored.
3) Root permissions: Root permissions are a hassle on this rom. On AOSP or AOKP roms, when apps ask for root permissions, one can simply say yes or no. But in MIUI, the apps are disabled by default from asking for root permissions. These settings can be changed, of course but the system warns you several times trying to dissuade you from doing this. This is an added step and is as such unwelcome. A simple thing like doing a titanium backup can turn into a challenging task if you don't know where to look.
4) Lag: I had installed the MIUI rom after a full wipe and despite this I found that there was a noticeable lag at times. Sometimes the transitions stuttered and sometimes the apps took a tad too long to open.
5) Phone book: In every other rom i have tried, my contacts showed up immediately. However in MIUI, I had to manually import the contacts from the sim to the phone and even then the photos which i had assigned to contacts didnt show up.
6) Notifications: This was something I forgot the first time I wrote this post. By default, notifications from gmail, twitter or any app are hidden from the notification bar in the MIUI rom. I don't fully understand the reason for this since Notifications and the omnipresent pull down bar are a pivotal feature of android. What this means is whenever you get a new sms or email there is an audio alert when you receive a notification but when you pull down the notification bar, there is nothing there! In my case, the default notification sound was "wolf howl" and when i received notifications, there was only the wolf howl and nothing on the phone! I was half convinced I was about to turn into a hairy werewolf (not such a bad idea, is it?
) Jokes apart, it is a highly inconvenient and unreasonable decision to hide notifications on part of the developers. You have to turn off the hide notifications option from the settings menu and then it works normally.7) Lockscreen Freezes: Another thing I forgot when writing the first time. Sometimes when you try to unlock the phone, you find that the lockscreen has simply frozen. You get no response whatsoever no matter how hard you try. But then the screen unlocks after a few seconds. Another thing is that if you push the power button (to turn off the screen) and then immediately push it again to turn it back on, you see your homescreen wallpaper for a while instead of going to the lockscreen immediately. This is annoying because you want to simply start using your phone rather than experiencing such lags.
Please understand, that all these complaints may be sorted out in future versions (MIUI updates every Friday as per user feedback). It may be that i have made some errors in settings or installation etc because of which the rom behaved this way. However, I have used other roms and i haven't come across any such difficulties.
For the aforementioned reasons, the MIUI rom isn't for me. Maybe it is for you though. Do give it a try and I hope that it runs well for you. If any MIUI user can comment on this and prove me wrong(and in the process, educate me on how to properly use this Rom) I will be grateful. Bear in mind that this is not an attack against the MIUI rom, merely my experience. Thank you for reading.
