TalkAndroid ROM Review: MIUI

by Andrew Greenfield
tagged cm7, MIUI, review, ROM, Root

I had several requests for this one so I decided to finally give it a few days on my phone. Back when I first rooted my phone this was one of the many ROMs to grace it for all of several hours until I ultimately settled in with Warm TwoPointTwo. MIUI is hard to describe for me. The best way I can put it is it reminds me of how critics pointed to Android’s biggest flaw until 2.3 really brought everything together: There are so many amazing things about this ROM (some so much that I wish they were ported to other ROMs), but there are also so many fundamental hiccups that would prevent me from using this as my daily driver.

For those of you that don’t know what MIUI is, it’s a Chinese AOSP ROM that is updated every Friday. It is ported by various developers to almost every Android phone.

How’s it look?

The first thing you’ll notice when you first boot up MIUI is how similar it looks to iOS. I’m not sure why saying this irritates a lot of MIUI users, but the fact of the matter is that it does. In fact, a lot of the ROM seems to be inspired by iOS themes. That’s not a bad thing, but you’d have to be naive to say otherwise. Regardless, one thing I love about MIUI is how well everything fits together. The developers clearly spent a lot of time making sure that everything looks like it belongs to one central theme. While I know I shouldn’t judge a ROM by how it looks, I can’t help but admire a developer who understands that pure performance isn’t everything. Hats off to MIUI for doing that. Just as important is MIUI’s ability to theme from its own theme manager app. The theme manager is where you’ll first here me talk about that mixed bag of emotions. On one hand, the theme manager was not only revolutionary when it was made, but it still paves the way for how similar apps work. You an download a theme right on your phone, and choose which parts of the theme you want to use. That’s freaking awesome. If you love the dialer of one theme, the notification bar of another, and the lockscreen of a third, you can totally Frankenstein them together. The sheer amount of customization (and with ease) of the look of this ROM is the best I’ve ever seen. The problem is, well, it still has some problems. First of all, the majority of the themes you can choose from are in Chinese. While this isn’t that big of a deal since you get screenshots of the themes you’re choosing, it still kind of bugs me since I have to wait for the previews to load (which sometimes took several seconds). There also aren’t really that many. However, all of that can be overlooked by a bigger problem: a lot of the themes (actually, everyone I tried) always had one sort of glaring problem. Whether the notifications are illegible (same color text as background), the notification bar is impossible to read, you can’t read the previews of your texts, or whatever; there always seems to be something that makes me wonder or not any of these were tested at all/updated. This can be avoided if you Frankenstein different themes, but I still find this kind of annoying. It’s rather irritating to fall in love with a notification bar only to realize that you can’t read half of your notifications. Again, if you can ignore these issues you’ll love the theme manager. It bothers me, but I know for a lot of people it’s no where near a deal breaker.

How’s it run?

You’re probably wondering how the ROM performs, right? Again, it’s a mixed bag of amazing, good, not so good, and downright awful. Most of the time this ROM is snappy. There are lots of times where this ROM is arguably as fast as CM7 if not faster. The Miren browser is quick and snappy, apps load almost instantly, and the keyboard is hands down the fastest I’ve seen (I’m a speed typer…This is the only ROM that has a keyboard that doesn’t lag behind when I get up to top speed). However, there are times where the ROM is so slow it makes your phone feel downright broken. I have never had my phone freeze on me so many times. That’s an impressive statement from someone who prides themselves in helping devs alpha and beta test ROMs. Yesterday, I had a very important phone call I was waiting for (by the way, call clarity on this ROM is fantastic) and when my phone rang I was unable to answer it. My power button still turned the screen on but I wasn’t able to unlock my phone because my screen wasn’t responsive. I waited a bit, tried to unlock it, and watched my lock screen go down nearly pixel by pixel. Luckily I was able to call the person back, but that is a problem that is a huge problem. I use my phone for business a lot and I can’t have it freeze up like that. The Googletalk app also froze on me during an important conversation I was having today. To make sure it wasn’t my phone I did two things. I rewiped everything on my phone and reflashed it. I also flashed MIUI on my brother’s Evo Shift. I still had the occasional freezing problem on both. One time it was so bad I had to do a battery pull and reboot my phone. With a rooted phone and no warranty, let me tell you how much I dislike when my phone freezes and requires a battery pull. Another issue is the keyboard. Remember how I said it was the fastest I’ve ever seen? Well, it’s also the most inaccurate. The keyboard is such a tease. It allows you to go so fast, but when you take a look back at what you type your horrified. It looks like the stock Android 2.3 keyboard, yet I’ve used that keyboard on multiple ROMs and not had that problem. I’m not sure why the auto correct is so horrendous, but it is. The good news is is that you can replace it with other keyboards (I actually just used the Android 2.3 one in the Market) and because of the snappy ROM they still feel quicker than ever. I don’t like feeling like I have to replace something stock, but this should in no way prevent you from trying this ROM out. As much as I find it silly to have to do that, that is what Android is about. You don’t like something: ya change it.

What about battery life?

Battery life is also strangely hit or miss. My phone got generally great battery life (except for when the phone froze), but my brother’s was much poorer. Both of our phones would occasionally heat up pretty badly and the battery would drain to the point where you could practically see it. This was after we had set the phone down for long periods of time. Essentially the sleeping battery use at times was absolutely awful. At the same time, when using the phone battery life is superb. While playing games and watching videos I noticed a much smaller amount of battery drain. So the sleeping battery is slightly below average, but while using the phone the battery usage was the best I had ever seen. So if you are one of those people who uses their phone almost non stop you should give this ROM a look. If you’re like me who uses his phone in spurts (I’ll use it for an hour, put it down for 3 more, then pick it back up, repeat) you might run into problems.

Miscellaneous

Some other points of note that this ROM does either really well or are things that I had problems with (you may not have these issues/find them problematic)

A couple of little goodies like the ability to hold the home button while the phone is locked for the flashlight are absolutely genius. Other devs take note.
The lack of 4G is troublesome. I understand the lack of 720p (as no AOSP ROM has this yet…The Evo thread even states “waiting for Cyanogen to implement,” but 4G was put into AOSP Evo ROMs months ago. I use 4G a lot.
LOVE the built in Music App.
Some people love the quick view for unread messages when they unlock their phone. I hated this with Handcent, but it is wonderfully implemented for those of you that like this.
I don’t like the lack of an App drawer. While widgets can still be used (as well as a substitute launcher), it resembles iOS a little too much for me. If you’ve ever looked at my screenshots or the old “best of” series, I don’t like having my apps on the screen.
The built in backup app is genius and should be in every ROM.
The “visitor mode” in the quick settings is great for letting your friends oogle and ogle at your phone. Hide all the goodies you want to keep secret. It’s rather obvious though, so hope you have dumb friends. Still a welcomed addition.
You can’t remove the AOSP voicemail notification. This can now be cleared in a lot of ROMs and it’s disappointing that you have to live with it on this ROM

So here’s the bottom line: This ROM has a lot of great things about it, but a lot of things that seem like they should have been fixed before version 7. A lot of people still love this ROM (and I mean A LOT), so I may just be picky. If the problems I had don’t seem like that big of a deal to you I would wholeheartedly recommend this ROM. If I didn’t list having an issue with it, it runs like a dream. But at the same time, I had too many issues on two different phones (and two different flashes/versions) to be able to say I’d recommend this ROM to everyone. I don’t know how far this ROM has come since its creation, but I feel like it’s so close to being an absolutely wonderful ROM, just not quite there yet. I know we have a lot of MIUI users out there so I have a question for you guys: Why do you like MIUI? I feel like I’m just not getting something. Let us know in the comments below.

» See more articles by Andrew Greenfield

Comments

kvaju

I used MIUI Galnet for my I9000, and like u said.

This is amazing ROM, beautiful, simple, but still not stable enough.
I file browser, settings, notifications, no app drawer (there is on v6 tough), music player, backup app, battery, launcher, the feel of smoothness when u work on it.. I LOVE IT.

but

some other thing are still not stable enough
camera not giving best quality, but they are near it
chinesse letters somewhere (well its they rom after all, someone should translate it)
fm radio (not that I ever use it)
and some other little bugs that are sometimes anoying, but I’m sure MIUI team will fix all that soon, and will have a PERFECT ROM.
Soon I’ll go back to MIUI I know, now I’m on Juwes ROM (nice one)
Pieter Breedt

Hi Andrew

I was going to install MIUI on my Desire HD, but thanks to this post I have thought the better of it. You have picqued my interes in Warm TwoPointTwo however, but it seems that you do not get it for Desire HD. Could you point me in the right direction? I do not seem to be able to find a website for this ROM either.

Pieter Breedt
EndlessDissent

I’ve been using MIUI since November, so I figured I’d clear some things up.

1. 4G – As far as 4G goes, it’s very hard to add it into MIUI. MIUI is closed-source, so the developers porting it don’t have the luxury of simply tossing in the required code to make it work. The guys porting MIUI have been trying to reverse the code and add it to the decompiled framework, but they haven’t had much luck. As it stands, unless someone can reverse engineer the code, we have to wait for the Chinese developers to add the 4G capability themselves. Unfortunately, since the ROM is made for a Chinese audience and there is no 4G service in China, the MIUI developers have no incentive to add the 4G code for us. That is why it’s taking so long to add 4G.

2. version numbers – You state that things should have been cleared up before “version 7″. Check the calendar. It’s July, the 7th month. MIUI version numbers are based on the date. Version 1.7.22 = 2011.7.22 = 2011 July 22.

3. app drawer – I totally understand that you may be used to an app drawer, and not having one is an uncomfortable experience. I felt that way, too. But check out the folder widget. I have 5 icons in my dock, 3 on the home screen, and the rest are tucked away in folders. My setup is nice and clean and without apps everywhere – only where I want them. Alternatively, you can put all your apps in one folder and put that folder in your dock. It’s just like a normal app drawer. If you really, really need an app drawer, there is actually a stand-alone app drawer in the Market, so you can use the stock launcher (which I love) and still have your comfortable app drawer.

4. keyboard – The keyboard in MIUI is the stock Android keyboard. On some builds, for whatever reason, the autocorrect doesn’t work properly. I’ve never experienced this, but it has been a problem for some users, and it’s not really a MIUI thing. It’s just a freak glitch and is not the case in every update. If you do experience the broken autocorrect, it can be fixed, as you said, with a different keyboard from the Market or by pushing the keyboard from CM or another ROM to /system/app.

5. Unreadable notifications – This is a definite problem with the themes. I can’t deny that. It’s a pain to remedy, but it can be fixed by going into Settings -> Programs -> Manage Applications, select the app with hard-to-read notifications (usually the browser among others like Root Explorer), scroll to the bottom, and press the button for compatibility mode. It will either turn on or off depending on which it was set to before, and the unreadable text will be fixed. Like I said, it’s a pain, but it’s a solution until the theme problem is ironed out.

6. Theme selection – The theme selection in Theme Manager is fed directly from the Chinese servers. That is why everything is in Chinese. There is nothing the translators can do since it comes directly from the Chinese to your phone over the internet. You can also get themes from MIUI fan websites. You may want to check out the forums at http://www.miui.us or http://www.miuiandroid.com. There are lots of themes there, and everything is in English.

7. Lock-ups – I have never seen that particular problem reported with incoming phone calls, nor have I ever had that problem, so I’d have to say that your experience was rare (extremely unfortunate, but rare). I also do not have any random freezing problems, though my Google Talk usage has decreased recently, so if it’s a problem with that app, it cropped up recently. The most common solution I’ve heard for random force closes and erratic behavior is to run “fix permissions” in ROM Manager. “Fix UID Mismatch” in Amon RA has also been reported to work well.

All in all, I’d say that yours was a fair review, and many people do have stability problems with MIUI, but most do not. If you have any questions or problems, feel free to stop by the forums at http://www.miui.us. I’m a mod there in the Evo forum. We try to help people the best we can. Almost any common problem, at least for the Evo 4G port, can be fixed by a glance through the MIUI Owner’s Toolkit thread here: http://goo.gl/BYhxD

http://talkandroid.com Andrew Greenfield

EndlessDissent,
Thank you for your welcomed corrections. The reason I flashed it on my brother’s phone was because I didn’t expect my experience to what most people have. I was surprised when he had a few of the same problems. That being said, as someone who does a lot of work with ROMs I got the feeling that perhaps the ROM (or build number) just didn’t like my phone. I just wanted to explain the problems I had but still try and explain that the ROM was a good one despite my many issues with it. Thanks again for the response!

Abdurajik

Thank you to the author and EndlessDissent. I have 1.7.29 and I’m almost absolutely impressed with MIUI except for one big problem. (I don’t mind the frequent phone restarts since it also happens on Darky ROM)

Coming from Darky’s 9.x, I wanted to just go from Froyo to Gingerbread. Since I only rely on ROM Manager Premium as my source of custom ROMs- MIUI was my ticket. The major problem I have is the hiccups when playing games. The game would stop every 45 seconds or so and it really takes the fun away from playing games.

This problem consistently occurs on games such as Battleheart, Roboto, and a couple others. There are other games where the screen just totally blacks out, games such as Age of Zombies. Age of Zombies opens but just gives me the black screen after about a minute on the app. I don’t know if it has something to do with games higher than 30MB – it seems to be the common denominator.

Games that run smoothly are Hex Defense, Nano Panda, Cut the Rope, Hyper Jump, and Safari HD. Later I will try playing Death Worm, Majesty, Myth Defense, Fruit Ninja HD, and a few more to see if those can run smoothly on MIUI as well.

So guys, my request is simple, can you please give me an idea why some games just pops and stops and hangs? I would like to keep MIUI because I am not fond of flashing ROMs on a weekly basis plus there are only a few I can find via ROM Manager.

Thank you in advance.
EndlessDissent

I have not heard of that happening nor have I experienced it, at least not with Age of Zombies, the only one of the non-working games that I’ve played. Of the others you’ve listed, I’ve played Fruit Ninja, and it played fine. I would suggest trying out the V6 Supercharger script here: http://goo.gl/hE2fn

Run that with Script Manager, selecting the option “run as root”, then when you’re finished, exit and use Script Manager to find and select the script /etc/init.d/99supercharger and select the options “run as root” and “run at boot”, then reboot.

The script will change how the phone manages its memory, and it will hopefully make things more stable.
Abdurajik

Wow, thank you. I will do that and am excited to run a script for the first time LOL. Or maybe the second time because I think I did run a script once using Super Manager. Anyways, will leave a reply here of how it goes as soon as I am done – probably in about 12 hours. Thanks, EndlessDissent for your help!
Abdurajik

update: I no longer have problems with the games mentioned above. I haven’t downloaded the script yet. I’m wondering what fixed it because I didn’t do anything yet. I’m just glad!
brie987

“The keyboard is such a tease. It allows you to go so fast, but when you take a look back at what you type your horrified.”

The ROM is from China, the keyboard is set on Engrish, nothing is wrong with it

That funny said I have been using MIUMI for a couple weeks now using ReVaMpEd 8.2 and it is running fantastic although I have had the authors glitch with frozen screen about twice a week. Only real issue is my corded earphones controls don’t work and the haptic feedback on Swype does not work. I can live without it, the speed and smoothness trumps those issues.

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