What prompted me to make this blog post is that Xiaomi's MiUI Android skin is just so unbelievably quirky and weird for a top smartphone manufacturer. The true reason I'm making this post is more about how Xiaomi's skin really could be better, but that isn't to say that it's entirely bad. No, there are some pretty cool things about MiUI, so let's start with the things I find to be pretty cool.
The Good Side
The Xiaomi Themes app seems to be pretty good because the app provides many good theme packs that don’t look cheap at all, and I think this is a good place to start if you are looking forward to making the Poco X3 Pro a lot more visually pleasing which it is in need of. If you paid attention in my Poco X3 Pro video, please take my advice of switching your icons and theme to something else. The themes app is a good place to start.
I like that you can individually grant/deny certain permissions that are beyond the standard permissions such as can this app use your camera, microphone, storage, etc. You can deny permissions such as apps being able to toggle on/off Bluetooth, being able to use certain phone sensors, and more. I don't know why Xiaomi would care to give these privacy functionality to its phone, but I'm glad that it exists.
I like that the game center shows you your CPU and GPU usage as well as current frame rate which could be really useful to just know these numbers in a quick pinch, however it would have been cool if there was a transparent overlay actively displaying the usage numbers.
While looking original, the Xiaomi quick settings from the control center look good. Yes it looks straight from an iPhone, but that also makes Xiaomi phones look and act more premium than the phones are set out to be. It's not a bad implementation at all, and all the icons and quick toggle animations look good. It's a copy cat, but it's good on its own that it doesn't really concern me about whether it's better than the iOS original.
In one way and another, I actually like this settings app more than OxygenOS mostly because the icons themselves look more representative of their sections while still look fun and colorful and simple. Also this settings app has more spacing than OxygenOS, but spacing is good overall. The only thing missing are mini descriptions for each settings section that tells you what that icon is for so like a display section would give you insight for brightness controls, refresh rate, light/dark mode, etc.
Probably my favorite thing about the camera app is just how CUSTOMIZABLE it is. It's so unbelievably customizable that it's beyond unnecessary. I could make an entire blog post about why other smartphone companies should takes notes about the Xiaomi camera app, but I'm just going to quickly list out the good stuff. Firstly, there's a bunch of filters and effects you can add to your photos, even after you've already taken them. More of anything doesn't automatically mean totally better, but some of these filters and effects are really nice. Secondly, you can combine filters and effects for video mode which means you can have a specific filter (my favorite is the Lime filter) and combine it with background blur. Very very cool. You can even use these filters and effects on the selfie camera! So cool! Thirdly, MACRO VIDEO? Yeah, that's pretty cool. Still cool that you can add filters to the macro camera, and that YES! You can turn on the flashlight when in macro mode. Beat that OnePlus! Fourth, you can change the color accents of the camera app so let's say you didn't like that the words and icons were yellow...well change them to a different color! So weird, but I love it so much! Last thing is that you can change the camera shutter sound effect to something else. While this is something that I wouldn't care about, again, it's about being customizable. Big respect to Xiaomi for making the camera app really intuitive and creative. Yeah it can be way better in a lot of different aspects, but it's something that has really captivated me.
The Bad Stuff
Yeah, some most of the things about MiUI is stuff that I really don't like which is unfortunate because I really think Xiaomi has a lot of good potential with their skin.
I don't like the app categories that are automatically sorted, but that's mostly a personal thing because I'm sure there are people out there that would like folders/sections within their app drawer to be more organized. That could mostly be Apple people with their divided app drawer, but Android people could want that too. I'm not one of them, but at least you can add/remove these sections.
I don't like the recent apps list because the line that separates the recent apps with the starts of your apps list alphabetically is not visible enough. The line is too thin, and I think two rows of recent apps is pretty excessive. Why not just have one row instead? It's a lot more manageable that way.
I don't like the quick options in the apps menu where it shows' three buttons about cleaning the phone and other optimization features. I know it's a budget phone and sometimes you just want to clean up the phone right before you game or something, but I kind of want more screen space dedicated into managing and looking at my app windows.
Not something I hate, but it's a little bit quirky to see that you have to swipe left/right to dismiss apps instead of swiping up. This will take some time getting used to.
I don't like the icons for the navigation buttons because they feel unoriginal and mismatched to what MiUI is supposed to be. They look ugly for a UI that is set to look premium, but I could speculate they are ugly on purpose so that you use swipe gestures instead which adds familiarity to the already iOS inspired skin.
On the lock screen, you can swipe left to access quick apps like the Mi Remote which is useful if you just want to change the channel on your TV really quick, but you still need to unlock your phone to access the app. This is a weird because you’re also able to use the camera while on the lock screen without needing to input your password. What’s the point of lock screen quick settings if you still need to unlock your phone to do it?
The downloads app is weird because when you are prompted to delete content you don’t want, you have to click an additional button that is actually for deleting the content. If you don’t click that button, then you are essentially just deleting the notification away instead of deleting the actual files.
In a lot of the native Mi apps such as the music or security app, you have to consent to the privacy policy of Xiaomi’s services. Some of these aren’t an issue such as the music app which you can remove the online promoted content and just make it an offline (probably still some data collection though) music player. But what strikes me the most is that the calculator app has a privacy policy too! And it doesn’t even have any online connectivity functions. This is very weird and makes me realize that yes, the reason the Poco X3 Pro can have a flagship tier processor and still cost under $400 is because of all the data collection within Xiaomi applications. Some of the Mi apps have ads/promoted content which is how Xiaomi can profit off of phone sales way beyond the costumer’s initial purchase. But even if you disable the ads/promoted content, you still have to abide to the privacy policies of the Mi apps, and if you don’t agree to them, you can’t use the apps. Sure there are work arounds to using the apps whether it would be installing an alternative or some other method, it’s still something worthy to note since this seems to be a core revenue stream from MiUI devices. Other than that, the calculator app is actually useful with many different conversions with my favorite being converting digital data into other scales such as KB to MB. I don’t have a problem converting data to higher/lower scales, but it just caught my attention. Again, nothing too special about the calculator app. There are plenty of other calculator apps that can do the same AND respect your privacy by having zero internet access.
Fill empty cells is on by default and it makes it weird whenever you rearrange apps on your home screen. So if you remove an app from your home screen or rearrange one app, then ALL apps are going to rearrange themselves in a slow manner where it makes it very weird to put an app where you want it to go.
Some budget/speed-oriented phones display how much RAM is being occupied in the menu for app windows, but this phone doesn't display this information that I would consider vital for budget phones. Instead it shows the three quick settings for phone optimizations.
The network speed indicator on the status bar seems to update itself ever 4 seconds which personally I find to be too long and I would prefer if it’s update cycle was done ever 2 seconds as seen with most other Android phones.
The gaming mode app looks very cheap because while it’s gamer inspired, it doesn’t have a good design to it.
I don’t like that when you toggle something like macro mode, the menu doesn’t go away by itself. I also don’t like that when you enable 4K 30 fps video for the main camera then you switch to the ultrawide which is capped to 1080p 30 fps, the main camera defaults back to 1080p 30 fps instead of saving that 4k 30 fps option. Very weird and a complete hassle to remember changing the modes back.
While the Poco X3 Pro isn't a camera-oriented phone, the AI scene detection and adjustments need to be better.
My Overall Thoughts
This post wasn't an in-depth review or look into MiUI as a whole, but I think my experience with it pretty much sums up the core aspects of the skin which most people are going to encounter. I think MiUI is too cluttered in itself that it doesn't exactly look good for people who want an affordable smartphone. Yeah there are some pretty cool things I really like about MiUI, but is that made up for all the things I don't like about it? Really hard to say, but my answer is a confident "no." Imagine paying for a $900+ phone and putting up with all the things I don't like about the skin, that's pretty rough. It’s sad that I have very mixed feelings over MiUI and how it functions because I’ve been considering the Xiaomi Mi Ultra models to be a considerable option in upgrading my current personal device whenever I do decide making that upgrade. I still have hope that Xiaomi will make a Mi Ultra phone that will be so good that I’ll look past the Android skin and just get the device, if that ever happens. Until then, Xiaomi needs to rethink what they want their skin to look like because there's no way you want to make your skin half premium looking and half for the budget smartphone market.
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