timmmay:

 

Any feedback on Miui @mrdrifer? Any drawbacks? Xiaomi have a mixed track record on quality - some of their things are great, some are really not good. Seems like a great value phone, but looking for gotchas after having the P9, which has good hardware but questionable software.

 

When I purchased the Mi5 it was a bit of a risk as MIUI felt like it was still in it's infancy, but the improvements have continued and regular updates keep coming, most of them I don't even notice as everything on the front-end just flows so well. I skipped a couple of generations between the mi5 and Mi8 as there wasn't enough of a step up to warrant a move until the battery started to get annoying for work purposes. It looks and feels like a premium phone as well, I've had a number of people asking about it during the work day.Most of my photos I took around the UK and Europe at the end of 2018 were taken on my phone and came out much better than I expected. Camera technology has taken a jump in the last year though. Paired with my Sony XM3s the sounds is great and battery lasts well enough for when the phone was designed.

The UI is close enough to stock that I'm happy with it and I still get to change some of the things that bother me. Themes are there if you want them, but I never use them. the updates are a little slower that stock android, but they do tend to release them for 2-3 years minimum on their higher end phones. Personally I try to spend no more than ~$600 on a phone and for that price I got what I would estimate were 90% of the specifications of the S10. No was would I be spending over $1,000.

The most annoying thing is the 'game booster' - just disable and remove that rubbish, it trys to launch with any games, slows things down and disables swipes, which are pretty important on a phone reliant on swiping for back and home etc... The system optimizer runs automatically on a weekly basis and suggests items such as APK's/Cache and Memory items which may just be taking up space/resources seems to help. Security patches usually follow any major releases/announcements/vulnerabilities.

I've had no unexpected reboots or lock ups etc... 

Just be careful on the models as I believe there is a Mi 9T and Mi 9T Pro and Mi 9 Pro which all have different performance and corresponding price points.