Discarding the iPhone! Moving to Android MIUI…

Mi4i back camera. Standard Quality, 4:3, HDR Enhanced.

Finally…The time has come for me to discard the iPhone and iOS in favour of the Mi 4i running Android MIUI. I thought that the steady degrade of the quality of hardware and software coming from Apple would keep them ahead for at least another few years, but, Apple seems to have stepped on the gas to make sure that the original Apple experience no longer exists. With the possible exception of FaceTime, there appears to be no advantage to using an Apple device anymore.

While I had been fiddling around a variety of Android based handsets, I never found anything usable until recently. I had seen the Redmi 1s earlier and also had a brief look at the older Mi 4 and I liked what I saw overall. With the Mi 4i, the equation seems to have tilted away from iPhone and iOS.

While both iOS and MIUI have their own share of nuances and bugs, they seem to be on an equivalent level now. I like the Mi 4i hardware a lot better despite it’s 5″ size. In fact, the screen is very good as is the battery life and the overall UI/UX. I had tried the MotoG (2nd Gen) for a few months and that worked fine as well. Motorola has included some useful apps unlike the useless app cram most other Android vendors do. The Moto G experience gave me the courage to try out the new Mi 4i which is also based on the latest Android.

MIUI seems to combine the best of both worlds at a reasonable compromise. Considering that iOS devices are a commodity item now, with prices ranging from 5k to 50k, it’s no longer a premium device with a great user experience. When I compare this scenario with a Mi 4i priced around 13k, I get an equivalent UX and far more flexibility than the iPhone 6 for 1/4 of the cost.

Having used the Mi 4i for over 2 weeks, I have gone through a couple of updates, reset the handset, tried the apps that I use and have switched over from the iPhone and changed my existing nano-SIMs to Micro-SIMs. MI has a very responsive user forum and there is active work on enhancements and bug fixes unlike any other similar company. Hopefully, their service centres will improve over time as well.

I think Google should take a lesson from MI and stop talking about technology like “Material Design” and concentrate more on usability and consistency. They can also learn from Apple and not keep adding features just to be able to talk about those “new features” without making sure that the existing ROMs and apps work as expected to create a seamless user experience. I still feel that Microsoft had, and still has, the best chance of taking over this arena, but, they seem to lack direction almost completely.

On the app side, there seems to be considerable improvement on the Android end and I hope that more apps will get better on the Android systems, compared to iOS. Given the better hardware and larger screens that are quite affordable now, apps might just get better on Android systems overall. Since developers now have to cater to multiple iOS versions, it would be somewhat equivalent to catering to a couple of Android versions.

It is sad where Apple stands currently and where it seems to be headed. Having used the iPhone since the first one, it was not easy to find another device to switch to. MI with its devices running MIUI seems to have taken up the game where Steve Jobs left off.

I will share my experience of the Mi 4i and the MIUI in a later post and talk about some of the nuances and issues with it. Overall, the experience has been good so far. The only thing I dis-like about the Mi 4i is the volume and power buttons. These feel out of place with the rest of the device.

Mi4i back camera. Standard Quality, 4:3, HDR Enhanced.

So, for now, MIUI on the Mi 4i it’s going to be…For me!

Apple releases new bugs in iOS 8.3, OS X 10.10.3 and iTunes 12.1.2 :)

Well…It has become routine now. New untested releases from Apple again. Anyway, we can safely assume that there will be new bugs and some old ones that will remain. The list of bugs “fixed” will continue to have some variations with every update besides “improving security, safety…” etc.

Bugs can fly!

iOS 8.3 breaks touch id for some according to quite a few blogs on the net. So, you might want to gather more information on this one before updating iOS to see which devices are affected by this bug.

For me, OS X seems to have some display related issues where windows will not redraw on my iMac even though the application is running and visible.

The brain-dead Photos app found only 20 photos on my phone where there was actually a whole lot more. This was on a freshly created user account after upgrading to 10.10.3. Out of the 20 photos, it could not import 2 with a message saying there was some issue with the metadata. Well…It goes even further, only 2 photos out of the imported 18 were complete, the rest were incomplete images with half of the image missing. The scenario did not change after upgrading iOS to 8.3. From a usable iPhoto, we now have a bare-bones, brain-dead Photos app!

Given the somewhat longer list of bug fixes in all the released software, it shows what all bugs have been around for years and are included in every update as being “fixed”.

Although I have yet to figure out any improvements, I do see new bugs besides some of the older ones still hanging around. Still to use the new iTunes update…Let’s see what new bugs are in store there.

With the tasteless (bitter for some) Lollipop from Google and Windows all-over-the-place, Apple has no real need or urgency to improve or fix anything, excepting on paper.

BTW, the iPhone 5c is available for the same price as the iPhone 4s officially. Head over to Amazon India for the current pricing and availability. With some coupons or offers, it can be even cheaper and falls into the same price range as a mid-to-low range Android device.

Overall, I would say it’s okay to update since the updates do not seem to be any worse than the previous ones…So far!

Apple – Let the Pain Begin!

After yet another flurry of untested and buggy software releases in the form of iOS and Yosemite, Apple was no longer concerned about the less than 50% adoption rate of iOS 8 at yet another boring event with lame jokes. They appeared to ignore the fact that even the close to 50% adoption rate for iOS 8 was primarily driven by the new iPhones.

The entire ecosystem that made Apple what it was while Steve Jobs was around is steadily crumbling. Personally, I think Apple made too much money to be bothered about quality, user experience or the identity the company had under Jobs.

iOS 8.0.2 – Extremely buggy and slow – Best Avoided for now…

Apple has pushed out yet another un-tried and un-tested release for iOS 8. There are too many issues to list out here. 8.0.1 worked better on the iPhone 5.

For starters though, FaceTime appears to be quite broken in different ways and combinations. Extremely laggy on the iPad 3, not that iOS 7 was a speed demon. The only way to fix the intermittent issues seems to be to reset the device, and the issues come right back after sometime. These are results from a clean restore of iOS 8.0.2 since 8.0.1 had issues when upgrading (according to Apple).

iOS 8 Released – Best Avoided for now…

Well, as I had indicated in my earlier posts, Apple is releasing buggy and untested stuff all over the place. The iOS 8 final build is the same as the GM released to developers earlier. No surprises, it remains bug riddled at least in my brief tests.

Apple has already pulled Health Kit related apps as they “discovered” serious issues there. I probably have some ideas on one of the bugs since I ran into it with no additional, related, apps. I entered some data in iOS 8 beta 5 in the health app and the entire data was destroyed when the device was updated to the iOS 8 GM. Although I had emailed a backup of the health data from the app, there is no way to restore it in the GM version. There was another issue that I could not change units to suit my taste, it seemed to be fixed/hard-coded.

Telegram – Now with iPad support

The open source messaging app, Telegram, has been the new rage in messaging for some time now. Its secure and free (including ad free) nature, coupled with support for multiple platforms as well as desktops makes it a far better choice for messaging than most others including WhatsApp.

With group chats of upto 200 people and secret messaging, it beats most others on this count as well.

What makes it even better is that all the normal chat text and data (video, photo etc) is stored on the cloud automatically unlike other such messaging apps. There are no limits on the data sizes.

The recent release of Telegram HD for iOS supports the iPad as well. Android users can check out Telegram on the Google Play Store.

Telegram identifies you by your phone number, as before, for all the devices you install it on.

Wiper – Yet another private messaging & call app

We have yet another entry in the messaging arena on iOS and Android called Wiper.

Like most such apps, this is also an iPhone only app. Even though it claims compatibility with the iPad, but, is not a universal app. The name sounds very similar to a far better known app called Viber and some might get confused between the two names.

iOS 8 Beta 3 – First Looks

After dabbling around with the iOS 8 Beta 3, I came across some interesting things. I had skipped Beta 2, so, it is possible that some of these might have been in Beta 2 as well.

If you restore to iOS 8 Beta 3, you will find the following changes on startup.

• Hindi welcome messages have been included in the startup screen.
• Keyboards are selectable at startup along with English (India). You can also select Emoji right here.
• Find my phone is enabled by default if you use iCloud.
• Upgrade to iCloud Drive for Yosemite or keep using iCloud documents.
• Share App Analytics with developers to improve apps.

iPhone Yahoo eMail – “Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server failed”

Well…Happened to my Yahoo account on iOS 7.1.2 on my iPhone. Was working till a few hours ago and then, all of a sudden, I could see the email coming in on my iPad, but, the iPhone persisted with the “connection to the server failed”.

Normally, deleting and re-creating the account should generally fix this issue. This is also documented in the Yahoo help and other forums. I did not fancy re-creating the account since that would mean that I would have to download my email all over again.

Surprisingly, the fix for me was quite simple. I switched the password of the account in settings to an invalid one and saved it. Then I changed the password back to the correct one and the account settings were verified and the connectivity issue was resolved.

Hope this helps out some others with a similar issue.

iOS 7.1.2 and Mavericks 10.9.4 Released – A preliminary look!

Apple released iOS 7.1.2 and Mavericks 10.9.4 a few hours ago. Once again, at least the iOS update appears to be untried and untested. There is also an update for Apple TV, 6.2, although I did not see anything new or different in the brief look I had after the update.

Those attempting to update iOS using iTunes might be out of luck as the update might get stuck after a while. The OTA update seems to work fine on a few devices that I tried.