In a continuation to my previous post on “Various flavors of android” , I got a chance to play with my niece’s Mi 4i running the latest version of MIUI called MIUI 8 based on Android 6.0. For those who have used more traditional Android launchers from Samsung, Sony, HTC, Motorola this is going to be a tough initiation as the User Interface is a drastic shift from what a traditional android launcher looks or behaves. The MIUI looks and behaves more like IOS with the iconography, typography resembling those from Apple’s iPhone.
But when I fiddled with it for a while I got the hang of it. Basically there is no app drawer with all app icons on home page (which can be split into multiple screens) with folder support to group apps but there are support for the traditional android widgets too. The notification bar is at the top with quick toggles and other useful information. The usual set of apps that comes customized along with the launcher like Dialler, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, Music player, Notes, Calculator all follow the same look and feel with nice and useful functions built into them.
The Quick ball with a virtual button floating on the screen providing useful shortcuts and the Dual space to keep a separate section of apps / files are some excellent utilities baked into the MIUI. But the problem with such a revamped look and feel is that even with 2 GB RAM and a Snapdragon 615 processor of Mi 4i the free RAM was only 600 – 700 MB with 2-3 apps opened and some presses and clicks did take some time to respond.
The MIUI is like a OS onto itself inside Android with lots of features built into it. I will try to cover more of it if possible in the future.