I switched from an Apple iPhone to Xiaomi Mi4 since past 4 months and I must say it is an excellent smartphone. Apart from power-packed hardware the Google Android 4.4 based MIUI6 ROM on the software front has been a big reason the phone is a huge success and is often compared to the likes of Apple iPhone 6 despite being cheaper almost three times to it. The company offers two versions of their official MIUI ROM - the "Stable Version" which comes pre-installed with Google services like "Google Play Store" and the "Development Version" which gets frequent updates, does not have Google services pre-installed, is tuned towards Chinese app-ecosystem but has the added advantage of being pre-rooted.

While I was enjoying my experience with the developer version of the ROM, last update MIUI6 v 5.2.13 broke Google services and re-installing using the usual "Google Installer" from the MIUI Appstore did not worked. This is when I decided to switch to the Stable version of the ROM and had to manually root my phone as shared below unlike the development version which comes pre-rooted.

Disappointed with not only the design but overall package of the new Apple iPhone 6, I finally gave it a ditch and went for Xiaomi Mi4. The phone is not available in India but importing the device from HongKong costed me roughly $450 (Rs. 28000/-) and I am very satisfied to get such a brilliant phone for almost half the cost of an iPhone6.

Xiaomi phones are also known for their popular MiUI Android interface, and I installed the latest MiUI 6 Beta having Google Android 4.4.4 under the hood. MiUI 6 comes pre-installed with an excellent Security app which features an Anti-malware Scanner, System Cleaner, Data Monitor, Call/SMS Spam Blocker, Battery Manager and an excellent permission manager which lets you take control of which apps have root access and other permissions. Having Android allows you to do a lot more like LastPass Auto Login feature for applications, this however failed to work on MiUI6 and always timed-out as shown below, thankfully the fix was easy as instructed next.