Monday, October 20, 2014

Day 2 with Xiaomi REDMi 1s

So I have finally received the Mi account activation email (came at 2 am in the morning).
Activated the account , but now running out of time, need to get ready for work.

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Quickly downloaded the Pebble App & tried to pair the REDMi with my Pebble, sync seems to be a Herculean task! Just wears the headphones & on bike enroute to work.
Unable to get the headphones completely working with the phone, so even though there is support for Google Now I can't tell the phone which song / playlist I want to listen to, also since my Pebble is not in sync can't Play/Pause/Change the songs either.
Super late for work, need to call colleague at work, but surprise! I can't.. never realised how much I take SIRI for granted till today. DAMN YOU REDMi 1s. Actually had to stop my bike on the side of the road, get the phone out & make a call.

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Makes it to work alive, Sits on the desk & tries once again to sync Pebble with REDMi, after couple of minutes SUCCESS! But thats just sync success i.e connection. Still not receiving my Notification on Pebble, digs in the App & finds this. :O  ==>
This is utter CRAP!! Defeats the whole purpose of having a Pebble.
Pebble kept disconnecting the whole day without me getting notification of any kind.

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Whats App Crash! Phone HUNG! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!! The ONLY App I install on this UBER AWESOME phone & even that crashes ???

One of the things I noticed is that in Android you cannot dismiss the keyboard by just tapping the non typing screen area, which is really weird. To do that you have either press the BACK button on the bottom of the phone or just go all the way to the top of the screen & go back one step. Din anyone in the Android team ever think that "You know what guys, this OS we creating is going to be like THE MOBILE OS OF CHOICE, also it will allow people to have BIG ASS screen size phones, so lets just dismiss the keyboard when people want to view the text & not type, all they got to do is tap the screen where their thumb /finger already is"  BUT NO! its not there & its a giant pain in the @## to keep moving your thumb to the top or bottom of the screen. I mean this is a TOUCH SCREEN phone, why not make the most of it? & YES, Apple has this feature. Yes we din have NFC, but we had COMMON SENSE!


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Browser : Can someone who has been using Android PLEASE explain me why CHROME is not your default browser? I tried googling this, dint get a proper answer. (or may be I din Google properly), what is with the browser called "BROWSER" & then having to install CHROME (it came pre installed in REDMi) Moving on..

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Its afternoon, I haven't installed anything on this phone apart from Whats App & the battery is already 15%, yes that right 3:00 PM & the battery is 15% thats a CRAPPY battery for the size of the phone, shouldn't it have a BIG & better battery than the i5c?  (I'll not lie, my i5c reaches 20% around 3-4PM )
Removes his power bank & starts charing the phone.

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Makes it through the day at the office, back to parking lot. Gets his headphones out. Plugs it into the phone & moment of truth, will Pebble atleast work now? NOPE! its doesn't. so I finally unlock the phone & plan to manually play the music, but to my surprise the GOOGLE MUSIC App is open. So Pebble did try to start the music, but the freaking thing is so BAD with two Music Apps (Yes TWO! - 1. Mi Music App - 2. Google Music App) I mean WHY!? Why would you do that??

So I had to manually kill the google music app & then start the default one, now Pebble was able to display the current playing song & also play/pause/change . This is a serious FAIL. whoever still thinks this is AWESOME for 6k is an IDIOT! I am sorry, but this is OS level FAIL! How can this be the case? why do you have to pack your own player when you have one from Google, WHY THE #BLOATWARE!!! No matter how many CORE you add in the phone or how much RAM you pump in, these 2 issues are like basic ones (Keyboard / Music Player). Don't get me even started on the so called AWESOME "NOTIFICATION CENTER" its HORRIBLE!! I can only see numbers when i get a WhatsApp message.. WHY!!? Why can't I just see a name & message.

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Gets home, Looks at his iPhone sitting there in its DOCK. 
PAUSES.. Sighs...
Smiles, picks it up & throws the SHITDROID AWAY!!

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I am ending this 1 week challenge, because I think I'll die of a road accident if I use this utter piece of crap while commuting. & if that doesn't, then the eco system definitely will!

You are free to comment below, but make sure you have used & experienced an Apple ecosystem before you dare to.


-- KG



Sunday, October 19, 2014

Day 1 with Xiaomi REDMi 1s

OK.. So I took the Android Challenge & bought the phone everyone is talking about, Xiaomi REDMi 1S. Being an iPhone user for last 5 years the switch might be an issue… or not?  Thats the whole  point of this experiment.

So after ordering the phone on flash sale Tuesday, I finally got the delivery today.

My first impression after looking at the packing , WHY DOES THIS LOOK LIKE iPhone BOX!

But hey thats a given, after all even Samsung does that, so I am going  to be nice to the new guy here. :)







The rest of the box content is also packed the SAME way like Apple! (anyone surprised!?) 









The Phone build is OK (duno why there is so much HYPE!), lets just say better than any 20k+ Samsung phone  but inferior to a Moto series phone (that includes Moto E as well)

As of now I have kept the phone on charge, because I have read couple of forums & people have had bad experience when they directly powered on their new Xiaomi phone. Some were even asked to do a factory reset! Huh! isn't this a new phone ? Anyways, its just for 6k so I am not going to let all these SMALL issues get in the way.

I'll be updating this page as the day progresses.

-- KG












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The phone is now charged & booted, the initial setup interface is again… same like iOS (but we  already decided we wont be holding that against the new guy) Moving on. 


Surprisingly Xiaomi hasn't heard about “OPT IN” options when it comes to privacy i guess. 


My contact in Indraprasth has hooked me up with a nice decent cover at a “Diwali discount price”.





There seems to be a new update ready, downloading  it. 























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Its getting impossible to use this phone, LAGS at every other thing! Cant even open folders without the LAAAAGGG, & its not that I have opened like 100 Applications, I only have play store open (Installing WhatsApp). If people who were praising this phone for being awesome, then I feel sorry for them. They really don't know what a LAGLESS phone feels like!

Anyways, not giving up yet.. the challenge continues...

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The Phone is a pain, my friends who are existing users of this phone are saying I am crazy, but this one does LAG, there is a noticeable difference in the response time, be it opening a keyboard to type in WhatsApp or opening folders.

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Music : (bow) Audio quality of my Apple headphones has gone INSANE!
Loved the equaliser, the headphone performed much better than they do on my i5c. Finally something that I found good in this phone. :) 










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Cant see notification on the lock screen!! Are you kidding me? Its 2014!! Apart from big screen hasn't Android done anything that can be useful?? The Mi account creation is another pain, why cant things just be simple!! Been 15 mins & still awaiting the activation link email. Its 30 past 00:00 I'll call it a day. Will see tomorrow how it goes when I get this out for work & this has to be in sync with my Pebble.

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Day 2 with Xiaomi REDMi 1s