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.