Xiaomi MI ONE with MIUI v4 ICS. The story so far…

So I promised myself I would be good with this phone. If you’ve been following you will know that I got the MI ONE as a MIUI daily use phone (and because it is astonishingly cheap), and I would use my HTC HD2 with the more experimental ROMS. So that was the plan and I stuck with it for 3 months.  The MI ONE has been an astonishingly good daily use phone. Certainly better than the HTC HD2 if only for its battery life.

So while I was being good, I stuck with the stable stock MIUI ROMs supplied “Over The Air” by Xiaomi. The current ROM as I write is 2.3.5n. That is a Gingerbread MIUI V3 ROM and it is excellent. The one issue is that not everything is translated from Chinese. Not a huge issue for me as although I am not Chinese, it is one way or another a major part of my life. Besides, MIUI is a Chinese ROM after all. But for some it is annoying if only for the inconsistency.

However, the Xiaomi website forum has been giving tempting screenshots of MIUI v4 ICS for a while now, and the latest versions of MIUI Music, lockscreens, etc. have appeared on various sites. So it was only a matter of time before I cracked and tried a development ROM. The one thing holding me back was the translation issue. The development ROMs are exactly that. There is no guarantee with them as they are part of the development process and things can and do go wrong. Even Xiaomi say they will not be responsible for the damage caused and you will blow your warranty. So if something went wrong, it would be really helpful if it went wrong in English. And as that was not going to happen I was confident of staying good. Enter MIUIAndroid.

Owning a MI ONE outside of China is a bit of a lonely existence. I have never met another owner. When I go to China later this year I will be surprised if I meet one there either. But at least on MIUIAndroid there are a couple of people there that have the phone on the forum. What I didn’t expect was any ROM support. It is not as if there going to be a huge demand for it as opposed to a Samsung or HTC device.  So it was quite touching that they produced a translated version of the  MIUI v4 ICS development ROM (currently 2.3.16). Worse, I felt obliged to try it after all the effort put in. So how did it go?

Well first up I ignored Mark’s clear instructions and there were clear consequences. Bricked phone like clear consequences. Not to worry though as there are a multitude of ways to recover a MI ONE and provided you have used MIUI backup before hand it isn’t a disaster. I ended up putting the MI ONE in fastboot mode and used the MI-flash facility to get it back from the dead. I then applied the new ROM as instructed.

So it loads and it has issues but then that is why it is a development ROM. Mark at MIUIAndroid put in a lot of time make it usable and it pays dividends… and MIUI V4 does look stunning.

So if there is a point to this post at all it would be:

1) MIUI V4 ICS needs a bit more work but the potential is exciting

2) The Xiaomi MI ONE doesn’t seem to mind being abused by a fool like me

3) If you have a MI ONE outside of China, you are no longer alone,  and that perhaps is the nicest thing to find.

Xiaomi News Round-up January

So I’ve dragged myself off my new phone to bring you the news – well my interpretation of it. It would be a bit much to call it insight so I won’t.

Xiaomi M1 phone updates

Firstly, Xiaomi M1 phone itself has received another OTA update. So we are now on MIUI 2.3.5k. This the stable version. I’ve not tried the development ROM. Meanwhile two other Beta ROMS for the Xiaomi M1 have emerged. First a beta ICS release. Subsequently a MIUI 4 (including ICS) beta ROM was released by Xiaomi. There are hefty health warnings issued with these and some testers have reported issues so I have steered clear of these for now. But they are available on the Xiaomi site for those who wish to play. We are in the middle of Chinese New Year now so don’t expect many more developments for the next few weeks.

On a more personal note, I am absolutely delighted with the phone. It is part of my daily life now and I have had absolutely no issues. The battery life still surprises me. The OTA process runs in background and offers you the chance to backup either locally, via the cloud or both. Just reboot when you are ready and it just works with no drama. Now it has got through its probation period I feel more confident about doing something drastic to my HD2.

Xiaomi Availabilty

As you may already know the third round of sales started from Xiaomi’s Website on January 12th. As I predicted, the 500,000 available handsets were sold out in hours.

There are some astonishing figures behind this according to Taiwan based Ifeng’s news website (in Chinese). The article sets out the context where many Taiwan mobile phone enthusiasts have scorned many of the mainland’s attempts to produce a smartphone and regarded them simply as Shenzhen knockoffs of there own HTC brand. Whilst this was certainly the case in the past, Xiaomi is a wake up call. Not only is it not a fake, but its better, cheaper and the Chinese mainland population are turning away from HTC and domestic Chinese phones like the Xiaomi and Meizu are attracting international attention. They note the Xiaomi M1 is currently reselling on Taobao (Chinese Ebay) for £258 on average. Remember it cost £200. An HTC EVO4G resells on average for £189.

On the January 12th sales at one point reached 700 orders a second, 100000 handsets were sold in first 45 minutes, 230000 after 2 hours and 300000 by 9pm that night. In comparison, internet sales of  HTC’s equivalent phone were 45000 for one week. They conclude that it would take a month for HTC to do what Xiaomi did in six hours. The fact that Xiaomi’s online system can handle such volumes amazes me if these figures are true, especially when you consider the farce that has been the British Olympic ticketing system. How can you possibly oversell synchronised swimming tickets??? Anyway, another concern for the Taiwanese were the metrics coming from Baidu – the main search engine in China. There ranking of smartphone searches was:

1.  iPhone4
2. Xiaomi M1
3. Lenovo S1,
4. Nokia ??,
5. Samsung
6. HTC

Meantime, Xiaomi are now in the process of delivering their recent batch of sales and this will continue through to March. I don’t think there will be any more sales until this time as they will need to build up stock again.

Xiaomi Customer Support

As you may know, up until now Xiaomi has purely been an internet only operation. This is basically the model that Google attempted with the original Nexus. Customer support was Google’s downfall and they eventually abandoned this approach and went back to a more conventional approach. Xiaomi are hitting the same problem but are going to tackle it a bit differently. According to their forum, they are opening a number of service centres across China where you can also buy accessories for your Xiaomi M1 phone and customer support is going to be the main focus of attention over the coming months. So it appears that they are going to adopt Apple’s approach to customer service. It will be interesting to see how this will develop should they choose to sell the phone internationally. If you are interested in this sort of thing, there is also a detailed description of the new invoicing systems including the printers on the Xiaomi forum. Again, it is in Chinese but I find it really refreshing to see a company – let alone a Chinese company, being so transparent about its operations, problems, plans and aspirations. You can see why the likes of HTC are worried.

Xiaomi M1 Vellamo Comparison

A picture tells a thousand words…

It is very fast… Final score was 1280.

Xiaomi M1 phone arrives at ITDullard Towers

Why the Xiaomi M1?

This is going to be a long one. Now the heavily trailed Xiaomi M1 phone has finally arrived at ITDullard towers I guess you might want to know a bit about it. So this is a bit of a review but not in the conventional sense. Most people just want a phone but I have got this for a very specific purpose.  So getting the emotional response of ripping off the packaging  playing with it out the way, I should reflect on how and why we got here.

As previously posted, I own an HD2 currently running a MIUI ROM. I bought it second hand and I never want another phone again. It is amazing and as you can see here it is still being usefully developed. The problem is that time is taking its toll on the poor thing. Daily use will shorten its lifespan. So to extend its life I need a daily use replacement.

The quintessential aspects that distinguished the HD2 were: it had a high spec; it could be modded; had developer support; and it was cheap (face it, a windows mobile phone just wasn’t cool at the time). So the first hurdle is what could replace that?

Enter the Xiaomi M1. Here is a phone that has a comparable spec (see here), designed to be modded, has the backing of MIUI developer base and dirt cheap.  Incidentally, if you don’t know what MIU is (no shame in that) then check this Blog which explains it pretty well.

So sorted then. Well yes but there were other hurdles to overcome.

Getting the Xiaomi

My successful experience is documented here, however things have moved on since then. The queueing ticket system is now abandoned. At time of writing you can buy directly from Xiaomi from January 15th. I posted the details here. Just to be clear, you can buy it new in China and from Xiaomi’s website at that. Any offers anywhere else are either second hand or a fraud. This is looking to change soon with the phone becoming available in Taiwan and also on contract via China Telecom.

Additionally, they are scarce. In fact they they’ve currently run out of stock for the third time because they are extremely popular in China. Xiaomi have announced that 500,000 handsets will be on sale on the 15th. My speculation is they will sell out in a matter of days if not hours if previous experience is to be followed.

This does beg the question about whether the Xiaomi M1 will ever be sold internationally. So I am going to digress at this point based on some of the feedback I’ve been getting because it is a fair point and I am not sure what the answer is. So

BEGIN SPECULATION>

I believe that Xiaomi fully intends to sell phones on an international basis. Primarily because it is a vehicle for MIUI. The coverage in the western press was no mistake. Lei Jun actively solicited this. However the M1 was pitched as a specialist phone for enthusiasts. What caught them completely by surprise was the phone went mainstream in China. Their are over 14 smartphone manufacturers in China. Can you name them all? No I can’t either. All of them are bigger than Xiaomi. Until October nobody in China had heard of Xiaomi. Besides many Chinese dislike their domestic brands. And then the iPhone 4s went on sale. This raised Chinese awareness to smart phones and they wanted one. Xiaomi’s product, price and approach could not have been better timed they have become the counter cool built upon the MIUI following. Baidu (China’s main search engine) recently featured a blog  where a guy criticised  iPhone users in the cinema for wasting money – he had a Xiaomi. What was interesting was the support he got and the Apple brand backlash. This has resulted in a run on Xiaomi phones. We can’t get them in the rest of the world but it is really really hard to get one China too as Xiaomi just didn’t have the capacity to cope. The  official Chinese Xiaomi forum has been inundated with complaints by potential customers who can’t get the phone. Xiaomi has responded but it takes time. They have moved production to Foxconn, added Toshiba along with Sharpe to make screens and recently announced a deal with a cable supplier. So they will move from only making a thousand a day to tens of thousands. Additionally, Qualcomm among others have recently invested in Xiaomi. These are not small players. However, the Chinese competition have not gone to sleep as the Huawei Ascend P1 S announced a CES yesterday clearly indicates and in turn Xiaomi will respond. So although I believe a Xiaomi phone will come to the rest of the world I wouldn’t be sure that it will be the M1. The rumoured quad core or something like it would seem more likely to me

<END SPECULATION

OK so assuming that can actually get the phone you have to get it out of China which erm… hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as I would have hoped but this had been down to a number of people who have been very helpful to me. I owe a lot of favours  and deepest thanks to all those involved.

I have pre-ambled enough… moving on.

First impressions

Contents

The packaging is very understated. A simple brown (but strong) cardboard box with a cutaway print of the phone explaining the various components. Inside, there is the handset, a luminous orange battery – you can get these in different colours if you wish, a black rear cover. USB to miniUSB data cable that doubles up as power cable, a Chinese power adaptor, instructions – in Chinese but the diagrams tell you all you need to know and a welcome card. I ordered an additional rear cover (purple since you ask) and that was also inside the package. There are no earphones. These can be ordered cheaply at the same time as a matching accessory (£5) but I prefer to use my own earphones.

The phone

The phone feels noticeably lighter than the HD2 but it still feels solid. The early prototypes received criticism over their build quality. This was my biggest concern however this has obviously been resolved and the build quality is on a par with the HD2, namely excellent. The HD2 has a partial metal casing but the plastic on Xiaomi does not feel cheep. Stylistically, the Xiaomi looks a bit anonymous and could be mistaken for many other phones out there. I guess this is where the cynics will claim that this is just another shanzai knockoff. They would be wrong. The design has been thought through. For example you can remove the SIM or SD card without having to remove the battery. This is not something you can do on the HD2. This is also phone designed to run MIUI and has a configurable button designed for this purpose. Many phones can run MIUI but none have been designed for it up to now. The Xiaomi feels better in the hand but then the screen is smaller and dimensions are smaller than the HD2. So it doesn’t feel or look cheap.

HTC HD2 and Xiaomi M1

The screen is much brighter than the HD2. You can struggle to see the HD2 screen on a sunny day. Not that sunny days are a common occurrence in the UK. So a smaller screen but you can read it when you go on holiday.

First start

The power button but is discreet to the point of being obscure. Once you turn it on the MIUI logo glows for about 10 seconds and you are in. Fortunately it offers English as an option so setting up is pretty much plain sailing from there. However not everything translates to English and a few things – like MIUI’s firewall persist in Simplified Chinese. There are a selection of popular Chinese Apps – Yoku, Weibo, QQ and others preinstalled. Google Market is there however so you can add what you need. Before I did that I tried the OTA update. This had never worked on my HD2 MIUI ROM. It worked seemlessly on the Xiaomi. The backup utilities also worked including the cloud option – again a feature that hadn’t worked on my HD2 MIUI ROM. A good description of how the backup and update process works can be found on this Endgadget video here.

Configuring

Installing apps is as straightforward as the HD2. Xiaomi is faster but comparisons are unfair at this juncture. The Xiaomi has the hardware clout and was designed to be an Android phone. The HD2 stood up well though. In general the Xiaomi is much smoother in transitions while the HD2 is not slow (at least with a NAND ROM) it can occasionally have lags. Again this might say more about the ROM than the phone so it is hard to draw conclusions. In general, configuring the Xiaomi is straight forward. The are three minor issues. Setting the default keyboard to Android doesn’t stick and the Baidu one kept coming back. The easiest way to resolve that was to simply delete the Baidu keyboard and the phone is forced to accept the Android one. The the second one to watch for is the GPS server which is configured for Asia. The setting is easy enough to change and GPS lock is quick. Finally, MIUI Music doesn’t behave which is both a shame and odd because it works fine on HD2. WinAmp works fine however so it is not a show-stopper.

Daily use

For daily practical use again the Xiaomi does better. My short experience is that battery on the Xiaomi is much better. I am lucky if I get a day out of the HD2 but the Xiaomi is good for 36 hours at a push. Signal strength poses an interesting issue. My network is 3G only so I can only really talk about that. The HD2 is quick to find a signal but also quick to loose it. Good for web browsing but not so much for streaming. Again this could be down to the Radio I’ve chosen but then anyone who’s rooted a HD2 will know about that. The Xiaomi is little bit more reluctant to catch a signal but is tenacious once you have got it. There is no grip of death – Xiaomi apparently learnt from the iphone and installed double antennae. Using the TuneIn App for example has been wonderful over the last couple of days. Obviously, as China is outside the EU the phone hasn’t had its volume limited so you can destroy your hearing if you so choose. Sound quality is consistent with the HD2 if not better and the noise cancelling mic makes a real difference on calls.. The camera/video on the HTC is loathsome – especially indoors. The Xiaomi (when I remembered to take the protective covering off the lens) is much better. Not great but much better. An interesting contrast of its capabilities is posted on MICGadget here. Another area is  the FM Radio. The HD2’s radio basically didn’t work no matter what operating system or ROM you put on it. The Xiaomi’s has very good FM reception but no RDS. I’ve not tried bluetooth pairing yet but intend to try it with my Garmin Sat Nav next weekend. I’ll let you know if there are any horror stories. This was something you could never really do with the HD2 because of the battery consumption. I must admit to missing the larger screen of the HD2 but the speed and smoothness of the Xiaomi compensated to an extent. 

Connectivity to Windows 7 and OpenSUSE 12.1 pose no issues. There are drivers on the Xiaomi site should you need them.

Future Use

Well this is just a double win. Both phones are suitable for running development ROMs but the HTC has more form.

Xiaomi M1 taken by the HD2

The Xiaomi is great for daily use so when I find a good stable ROM I can run with it on this phone.

HTC HD2 taken by the Xiaomi

The HD2 is great for playing with those unstable ROM’s or who knows I might even try Windows Phone 7 one day.

Finale

The HD2 is a truly classic phone. But it had a miserable start in life. It has matured over time to become what it is. Will we say the same about the Xiaomi in 2 years time. Hard to say but it has the potential and these are interesting times. Lei Jun wants to run Windows Phone 7 on the Xiaomi. So it could just happen starting with ICS at the end of this month. Told you it was a long one

Comparison between the Xiaomi M1 and HTC HD2

Just a quick heads up before I get round to posting the detailed review of the Xiaomi M1 Phone. By way of some background I’ve done a quick specification comparison table between to the two devices. Consider it your homework. I might test you later. You can find it here. Obviously if you find any errors or omissions feel free to let me know.

Xiaomi Phone News

So while I drool over my new toy, Lei Jun has posted in the Xiaomi forum giving details on the next opportunity to place an order for the Xiaomi M1. The highlights are:

• He feels a bit guilty about how oversubscribed each order round has been.
• 500000 units are available for the next round.
• Sales on the Xiaomi website start on 11th January 13:00 hours China Time
• This time you will need a 100 Renminbi (Yuan) deposit – about £10
• Deliveries won’t start until 1st February  due to the Chinese New Year celebrations and finish by end of March
• An additional orange back cover will be given with this round of purchases

So the ticketing system I took advantage of is not happening this time round.

Other news: The Sohu website has spotted fake Xiaomi websites appearing claiming to be able to supply  Xiaomi or Xiaomi like phones. Xiaomi themselves have also issued a warning on their site here. I suppose it is some sort of compliment but you really need to take care.

Xiaomi M1 arrives!

Guess what the postman delivered this morning???

And guess what was in it?

And does it work?

Working straight out of the box like a dream. MIUI as it is meant to be 🙂

I’ll do a more detailed post over the coming days. But forgive me for now because I want to play with my new toy.

Xiaomi Rumours

Ok, the plot thickens. The rumoured Xiaomi M2 now has a rendering. Pictures of it can be seen here at Gizchina.

Interestingly they seem to be sourced from the official Xiaomi Forum. Unfortunately, Google Translate only gets you so far so the source cannot be confirmed – by me at least. What is clear is Xiaomi is being tight lipped about it for the time being and not responding to commenter’s requests for clarification. There is also some speculation that this might be a spoiling tactic by a competitor to encourage M1 customers to hold off until the M2 is released. This might actually have legs as Chinese New Year is approaching and Lei Jun’s blog yesterday talks about the special offers and ramped up production for the M1 for the holiday period. It is now up to 15000 units a day from what was originally a 1000 units a day when they first started. A new round of online sales are due to start on January 5th. Additionally, the recent announcement that Xiaomi had secured $90 million in venture capital funding from Qualcomm among others may have stirred things up.

So it is still all speculation at this point.

P.S. – Just noticed that the Meizu dual core MX goes on sale on Sunday….

The man behind the Xiaomi Phone – Lei Jun

There is an interesting article in the China Daily today. It covers a speech made by the man behind the Xiaomi Phone – Lei Jun. As I have mentioned in earlier posts this guy has been styled as a latter day Steve Jobs. Now he may not quite live up to that standard but at the age of 43 his CV is impressive and he is certainly charismatic. He was one of the early internet pioneers in China.

Anyway the article is worth a read for some background but more importantly it puts a bit more meat on the bones of some of the recent rumours. For example, Foxconn is taking on the production of the Xiaomi phone in China. This should at some point open up the supply to other markets. The article can be found here.

Intriguingly, there are other Xiaomi devices being  hinted at too – the M2. According to Gizchina the rumoured specification is:

• 4.6-inch touch screen.
• 2.5Ghz CPU.
• 2.5GB RAM.
• 32GB of storage.
• 5 mega-pixel front camera.
• 12 mega-pixel rear camera.
• Android Ice-cream Sandwich OS.
• Estimated price of 2499 Remimbi ($394 or £255)!

This is just a rumour however. In the meantime I will be happy to receive my M1 in the next couple of weeks.

Biggest selling smartphone in China?

Well it was perhaps unsurprisingly the iPhone….. But only just according to MICGadget. Having cleared the backlog (the one that I was in), Xiaomi went back to online sales on December 18th for their MiOne phone . They had an inventory of 100,ooo handsets. It sold out in 3 hours! This compares favourably with what happened when the iPhone 4 and 4S went on sale in China (600,000 units in one day). The level of demand for the Xiaomi phone in China even surprises me. It is a bit of a generalisation but mainland Chinese tend to prefer known brand names over their own domestic ones. Part of this is the perception of the quality of their domestic products. Part of it is just conspicuous consumption.  This is why Apple does so well in a country where in many areas there is no 3G network (although this is changing). Xiaomi isn’t a widely known brand even in China so this level of demand indicates that attitudes may be beginning to change. This may not be good news for Apple in he long term – especially when you can buy two Xiaomi phones for the price of an iPhone.