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 iOS 8.3 – Dangerous for some!

Can of Bugs!

Having just restored my iPhone 4s which had gone dead today after the iOS 8.3 update yesterday, I guess I have to take back my words from the previous post. I had mentioned that iOS 8.3 does not seem to be any worse than 8.2 and it should be okay to update. You might want to hold off the update since there are quite a few reports on the net which makes iOS 8.3 seem to be one of the buggiest releases ever.

My iPhone 4s went into a reboot & switch off loop while sending an email. The only way to fix it was to restore it using iTunes. A caveat here is that the phone had to be put in recovery mode for it to stop rebooting long enough for iTunes to recognise the device. For those who might have the same issue, just keep the home button on the phone pressed while plugging the USB cable into your system (Mac/PC). You might have to retry this a few times before the phone lands up in recovery mode and stops rebooting & switching off.

Do not attempt to update as that will generally fail. A full restore will work more often than not. I would also not recommend restoring from a backup, after recovery, since that might lead to the same loop all over again.

Think I should mention that iOS 8.3 also drains the battery on all my iPhones pretty fast and while updating with iOS 8.3, the phones heated up quite a bit.

I guess it’s time to carry around a back up phone if you use an iPhone and keep updating to the latest firmware from Apple…Just make sure it takes the same size SIM.

Watch out for the Apple watch…it might tell you the date & time of a different planet 🙂

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!

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).

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.

Setting up a new iPhone/iPad? A brief How-To…

Back in 2010, I had listed out some of the apps I was using and recommended the same. A lot has evolved since. It’s not just the apps, its also the devices that have changed giving rise to better and more powerful apps. I will try to cover the basic setup options for a new iDevice running iOS 7. iOS is currently at version 7.1.1 and, ideally, one should upgrade to this version, if not already on it.

I will focus on the iPhone here since that is the most commonly used iDevice. Most of the following also applies to the iPad. You can find tutorials for the iDevices on Apple’s site as well as YouTube, if needed.

PasswordBox is free for a limited time!

PasswordBox is free for Christmas. People who missed out earlier can get it from their Blog link. PasswordBox is a password manager that works across browsers and mobiles. The customer support is also great!

At 0 cost, this would be rated as a must have!

Merry Christmas!

BBM for iOS and Android…Bypass the Queue!

Despite the scaling issues BBM has, it also has one open loophole to bypass the queue system. This is very similar to PasswordBox earlier.

The only pre-requisite is that you have an active BBM account, just like with PasswordBox earlier. You enter the email ID for your active BBM ID and then you get the option to create a new BBM ID. Thats it!

Really, it is that simple, provided you have at least one active BBM ID on iOS/Android.

Apple iOS 7, iTunes, iPhone 5x and OS X

As already mentioned in an earlier post, I believe that Apple has lost it. The design, the innovation, the ease of use, the relatively stable software…it’s all been thrown out of the door. Jobs put Apple light years ahead of the competition with the iPod and then the iPhone. Apple continues to make money because of this legacy, despite the current state of affairs.

Let’s take iOS 7 to begin with. The radical re-design is more like a kiddy project with garish colours and the overall UI being harsh and the UX almost completely destroyed. The maps disaster remains intact, the UI/UX almost completely destroyed, the ease of use and the visual clues gone. The release contains security bugs as before. The interesting part about the “maps” is that Apple continues to use Google Maps on the web site for “Find my iPhone” rather than it’s own, so called, non-existent, Apple maps. This, itself, shows the complete disconnect in Apple today.

Apple iOS 7 – Beta 5 – Nothing much…again!

I am not sure why Apple pushed out a “beta 5” so soon after the last one, but, nothing really changes. Excepting for better looking icons in settings and a dialer that looks more and more like the Windows dialer.

Besides some more new beta bugs, nothing has changed. All older issues of the UI/UX remain exactly as they were. Let’s see what beta 6 comes up with before jumping to conclusions as there is still a lot of time till the final release.