OT: Xiaomi phones

[Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin]

I recently got a Mi Pad from geekbuying.com.
[can't recommend them.  took several months, perhaps in part because they
declared "$20 value" and I got warning from Israeli customs.
when I rebuked them they pointed to me to a page where that's their
official policy unless asked not to lie...]

270USD (incl. shipping) + 169ILS mas kniya + 233 maam.

Spec-wise, it's similar to Nvidia Shield tablet (Tegra K1) but better 4:3
screen and cheaper.  No stylus though, and no HDMI out.

Use case was 8 month baby [1]; mostly her brother "borrows" it since he
broke his Yoga B8080 tablet.  (Yoga's stand was extremely convenient for a
kid and contained a monstrous battery but alas didn't take the abuse for
long...)

Performance is very smooth.  I haven't tried any high-end gaming yet but
it's supposed to be superb.
I didn't really need such power, simply got tired of several underpowered
hardware and felt like maxing out this time...

Software: Xiaomi ships a heavily customized android 4.4.4.  It somewhat
resembles Apple (as does the hardware design).
There are various thoughtful touches.  I gather their software has a big
enthusiastic following and they are very responsive to fan feedback, but I
don't really have time to enjoy that and I'd rather have stock android if
only to stick with open source.
It comes with Xiaomi's app store, browser etc — but also with google's Play
Store so getting Chrome etc. was easy.
I'll probably start with more familiar launcher.

I haven't looked into alternate ROMs — or even rooted yet — but it seems
easy.
"Xiaomi issues regular Miui rom update for all its devic es. there are
stables roms issued once per month and weekly developer roms. The later is
always rooted and the roms from the link above [http://xiaomi.eu/community/]
are always without unecessary chinese apps and in european languages. "

Unusually, Xiaomi also provides its skin for a lot of phones by other
manufacturers: http://en.miui.com/download.html


Also got protector + a not so good case from eBay, can elaborate.


[1] Whether this is a good idea is very contentious, but as a programmer
I'm determined my kids will, as Jeff Atwood put it, be "issued a regulation
iPad at birth. You know, the best, most complex toy there is: a computer."

2015-04-27 20:06 GMT+03:00 Mord Behar <mordbe0 at gmail.com>:

> Has anybody on this list bought one of Xiaomi's new phones (or tablet)?
> Spec-wise they should be really good, and very cheap. I'm curious about
> use case stories, buying the device, shipping it to Israel, using it,
> upgrading it and so on. Also, what you did when it broke.
> Thanks.
> Mordechai
>
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