How Xiaomi is deceiving us. Why is such a Chinese not needed

The deceptive reputation of the killer of Apple and Samsung will not lead to good.

A new flagship smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi5, will be on sale soon. Only the lazy did not write about this device, but only a few touched it. We were brought one of these from China, we went with him for a week and came to an interesting conclusion.

I say right away that I am writing from myself, this is not a repost, not a rewrite. Just opinionwhich the situation prompted.

The phenomenon of Xiaomi, which is about to kill everyone

Xiaomi is a unique company. It works differently than most Chinese electronics brands: they have design philosophyproduction standards, its own Android shell, top technology and hardware.

Of course there is still Meizuwhich is openly sold on the Russian market, but that one has trouble with the design.

The Xiaomi phenomenon is built into the reputation, the company has in fact legendary status outside of China. Ask any gadget lover, and with a 99% probability he will say that he knows her, that she makes cool things inexpensively, and in general, “you should take xiaomi” as soon as possible.

Xiaomi is also constantly compared to Apple, because the Chinese remain Chinese. They brazenly and directly copy not only the interface and design elements of Cupertino equipment, but even advertising materials. This is not without reason, it seems to be wrong, but it is forgiven by the Western media. It is there that Xiaomi is regularly praised with tears in their eyes, every second article is replete with the format heading “Apple and Samsung killer”.

But the main thing is that Xiaomi manages keep the price well below the market for anything that sells. It turns out some kind of ideal company: like Apple, only accessible to everyone. They are only stopped from taking over the world by the fact that they cannot be officially sold outside of China – they are not allowed to enter the West, because “evil capitalists will immediately crush the too successful Asian competitor with lawsuits.” Something like that.

Of course, there is only half truth. In fact, Xiaomi has been playing a tricky game with us for many years in a row, and we are being led.

Why no one talks about Xiaomi jambs

When a new Apple tech has a problem, absolutely every media in the world trumpets it. No wonder! Such stories guarantee the publication a ton of clicks, shares, activity in social networks. Antennagate, scratchy paint, bendable cases, different processors.

And who cares to read what problems they have Xiaomi? Especially to write about it? The question is not rhetorical, it plays into the hands of the Chinese.

To understand why Xiaomi is covered in a positive way, you need to know how the techno media sphere works. 80-90% of all news are generated by English-language resources, and the editorial office of most of them is geographically located in the United States. Editions in Europe and especially the CIS publish reposts or reactions much more often than their own content. Everything is logical, because America has been a source of IT-related news for centuries.

Since the agenda is being formed in the USA, the most relevant trends for Americans are given the greatest publicity and discussion.

And here comes the token: Xiaomi is not sold in the US through retail. Smartphones are not approved by any of the largest operators in the country, and in fact are considered an “Asian pearl”, which “you want, but you can’t buy yet.” And since it’s impossible, all that remains is to touch it at exhibitions, read reviews, look at the site and cool pictures.

In general, Americans are used to the iPhone for $700 or 2 years of slavery to the operator in exchange for a big discount. They can be understood. When they see a stylish, metal, unlocked smartphone with a bucket of modern technology for only $250, they can’t have any other reaction than AMAZING. Hence the enthusiasm, bold statements about the future dominance of Xiaomi, which are quickly spread around the world by IT publications, greedy for reposts (including us, yes).

The smartphone itself, these reviewers-journalists – with all the great respect for them – often did not use for more than 15 minutes. They didn’t carry it with them, didn’t work with it 24/7, didn’t check for problems. Most importantly, no one stayed with smart after the release of new versions, did not feel the disgusting Xiaomi technical support. As a result, we get continuously positive information backgroundforeign orders on Chinese sites are breaking records, and what’s next is not interesting, the problems of the third world.

For six months I have had their smartphone, which for a long time was considered top-end; there are already 4 of their batteries, which are called the best on the market; Finally, recently there was the very flagship Mi5, which few people managed to see live. I also know the owners of the Mi Band bracelet, I’ll tell a separate story about it in general.

Miracles do not happen, or that Xiaomi will not want to tell you

It’s hard not to fall in love with Xiaomi smarts – their design is excellent, especially for flagship models. I gave up in the middle of 2015 and bought a model Xiaomi Mi4i on an Asian site. The device arrived quickly.

Mi4i is highly valued among gadget lovers: in addition to good hardware, it has one of the best audio chips in smartphones, and the rest of the hardware did not let us down. It should not be confused with Mi4, Mi4s and other modifications that look exactly the same (time to beware). No, this is a former premium device from Xiaomi, which should show a TOP result in all respects.

I was immediately struck by how strong the local Android shell is (MIU) is similar to iOS. Or is it the other way around? It’s hard to say, but there was no addiction. The settings menu was generally copied and pasted with similar icons, and nothing. From the built-in application, you can download a theme with a design for the iPhone, after which the picture can be considered complete.

I used Smart for a couple of weeks, and then I gave it to my parents and did not regret it. They found a few more problems with smart, which generally reflect the real wrong side of Xiaomi devices.

1. It reboots itself from time to time

Maybe once a month, maybe once a week. This problem happens to many models of that year, complete data resets, settings changes do not help. How does Xiaomi solve this issue? No way, a couple of released updates did not fix the situation.

I probably got a marriage, but there is nowhere to return it, nowhere to fix it. There are no official sales in Russia, remember?

2. Battery life is ridiculous for such a battery

Mi4i lasts a maximum day without a heavy load. If you use it as the main handset, the charge disappears by 8 pm. And this is in battery saving mode, in which the performance itself is not a fountain. Turning it off, by 16 o’clock in the afternoon we get a “brick”.

I can’t believe that there is a 3120 mAh battery inside, 10% more than in the iPhone 6S Plus! Four times already, Mi4i started to discharge for no reason in just a few hours to zero, and then only resetting the settings helped.

3. Smart only gives the impression of fast

A big plus of the MIU shell is that it mimics the fluid interface that iOS is famous for. But in resource-intensive tasks, with prolonged use, and especially when downloading applications from Google Play, the device hangs up for a few seconds, it gets dull. As if this is not a “pearl of Asia”, but a noname-smart for 5 thousand rubles from the showcase of a mobile operator. There is no decent optimization of hardware and software, it seems that they did not even invest in it.

4. Each model has a ton of versions, firmware, modifications

If you come from the world of iOS, Xiaomi will not be easy for you. By ordering a phone from Asian sites, you will receive one of a dozen of its varieties. Differences can be in the processor model, the amount of RAM, the quality of the screen – in general, in all aspects, except for design. In this case, the model will be called the same.

In addition, the biggest problem is different versions of the MIUI shell for different markets. One will have Russian, the other will not. One feature is there, the other is not for some reason. For example, there is often no radio. Somewhere even English was not allowed – something in between with an admixture of Chinese. It is always possible to reflash, but this is time, risk and other moments that you do not expect when buying smart for more than 10 thousand rubles.

5. In devices from China, a bunch of left-handed software is flooded, which eats resources

This is a disease of almost all modern Android smartphones, but the flagships of other companies have already begun to get rid of it. Almost every device has the all-powerful “improver” Clean Master, and Xiaomi goes further – it adds some more left-wing defender programs, blockers, and so on. A bunch of chats, closed app stores, incomprehensible processes – you buy a Trojan horse, from which you then clean everything with a magnifying glass, turn off these processes.

You can remove all the nonsense only with the help of root, that is, jailbreak.

6. Xiaomi is hitting smartphones faster than Western brands

The last and most important point. Everyone happily laughs at LG, Samsung, which update their old smartphones to the new version of Android with a long delay. But Xiaomi doesn’t do it at all. For example, the same Mi4i will obviously remain on Lollipop 5.1.1because the Chinese are too lazy to update the MIUI shell.

They have a new smartphone Mi5 – Android 6 has already been uploaded to it, and let the rest endure.

The lack of updates and support for the manufacturer is a sure way to the imminent appearance of problems, unsolvable glitches and a happy life of the owner on w3bsit3-dns.com forums as a home page. There is nowhere to complain! And if you have some kind of glitch, jamb, problem – well, then you saved it.

The problem is not only in smarts. How Xiaomi threw bracelet owners

I’m sure everyone here knows the sports bracelet Xiaomi Mi Band – which is super-cheap and seems to be good. So, Xiaomi took and threw the owners on the function for which the majority purchased this tracker. And iOS users had the worst.

At the end of last year, Xiaomi updated the iOS app and silently removed the function of tracking the phases of sleep. So far, the feature has not returned. The smart alarm clock disappeared with her. Moreover, even the usual alarm clock and notifications are now buggy. Do not believe me – read the official forum on Reddit, where people are looking for a way to restore the old version of the official application.

After the update, many have erased all activity data, the entire history for the year. Somewhere running tracking does not work, for someone the battery life has decreased to 5 days instead of 20-25. Xiaomi does not answer this. That’s the whole story.

If this happened to trackers Fitbit or Jawbone, not to mention the Apple Watch, there would be a scandal of cosmic proportions. But in fact, we hear complaints only in the comments to our articles, where the owners are desperate to find solutions to the problem.

Okay, so how do you like Mi5?

The example of Mi Band is indicative. He recalls that Xiaomi was and remains a company from China that follows Western standards only in advertising, marketing and design. By reducing the cost of everything else, a low price is obtained.

Knowing all this, I did not experience much enthusiasm from Mi5. You can eat a new pear, but you will still choke in the same way.

The strongest point of the device is its cool glass back panel. The top model generally has a ceramic panel that does not scratch. But such a model in Russia will cost 40-50 thousand, and then who needs it?

The fact that the design is practically licked to zero from the flagships of Samsung is just details. Apple borrowed shiny edges. As a result, the device lies very strange in the hand: the bottom panel is comfortable, and the edges dig into the hand. To the credit of the Chinese, the screen is well very high qualitycolor reproduction is natural.

Inside put a top-end processor Qualcomm 820, which flaunts in the flagships of 2016 from eminent manufacturers. 3-4 gigabytes of RAM, an NFC module, a cool camera … In general, on paper we have a cool smart phone worthy of standing on a shelf with the best models on the market.

But miracles don’t happen. Firmware is disappointing again. The screen lock sometimes works with a long delay. Periodically starts to lag for no reason. The opening time of applications in general can be abnormally long. Well, takeoffs, of course. I don’t want to talk about how the settings in the system are arranged at all – it’s just an endless dark forest of menus.

I’m sure that there is wildly cool iron inside, but its shell simply cannot open it because of its bugs.

Now there is no Russian language on the device, there is not even a full-fledged English out of the box. Of course, everything can be improved. But that’s not the point. After using Mi5 for exactly a week, I did not see any qualitative changes in Xiaomi’s approach. The company just churns out WOW phones at WOW prices, leaving those who have already spent money on the sidelines.

Therefore, it is doubly interesting what fate awaits the Chinese when they officially begin to be sold in Russia. I’m sure the success will be crazy, but sooner or later people will come to their senses. By the way, Xiaomi does not have to go far for a good example. The same Samsung has come a long way from copy-paste to the market leader, moving away from Apple in everything, including design.

But that’s a story for another time. What is good for a Chinese in Shanghai is bad for a Russian in the outback.

Xiaomi is not the Chinese Apple. This is Alibaba with Apple.com design.

Xiaomi may continue to win the headlines of the Western media, but personally I don’t have a foot in them anymore.

Do you have something to add, disagree or just discuss? Write in the comments. Thank you.