Is Miui Resting On Their Laurels?

[thenext1]

I first bought a Mi4 LTE some time ago and it came preinstalled with MIUI 5, and tested it for a while also with MIUI 6 and 7.
Back then I found that MIUI was much self-coherent, and I liked it.
Now with MIUI 8 (and a Mi 5) I find that its user interface is becoming very erratic, especially in the areas of new functionality introduced in Marshmallow that already existed in MIUI (battery saver, permissions, etc.).

Why do we have to have two app permissions screen? Which one takes precedence?
Why there are so many inconsistent screens where to see battery life and adjust battery settings?

Add this to the ever-present MIUI niggles, such as aggressive battery saving, background service termination, etc.
Chinese bloat creeping up at every release (try the Xiaomi Browser's news pane, it digs just Indian news).
Developer stubbornness (Xiaomi Browser can't hide address and button panes... seriously?)

Isn't it becoming too much of a hassle to configure and use it?
(It's not a blame to you, bear with me, but to chinese devs!)

 

[thenext1]

Some more niggles I have about MIUI:

Browser doesn't hide address and button bar when scrolling, and can't be made to, wasting much-needed screen space......... Is it still 1995 in China?

The e-mail client doesn't let me attach photos from the Gallery and resize them, all in one go. It's not OK to send 6mb+ photos over email, and having to save resized versions from Gallery and delete them afterwards is very fiddly.
Samsung and LG's email client could do that. How come MIUI can't? (already sent a feedback about this)

The Camera's UI is a disaster, you can't change settings as basic as aspect ratio (which is important in photography) or resolution from the live view, as almost any phone can do. It doesn't even do 16:9 live views well, as most of the view is covered by the shutter button. You also can't set any of this from the Settings screen.
MIUI calls it simplicity, I call it "dumbing down" and "barebones".
How do you open Settings anyhow? Who knows?! Luckily I've set a Menu long-press on the softkey, and holding the softkey in the Camera brings me to its settings, but a newcomer will never guess it. And if you start Camera from the lockscreen, this "shortcut" doesn't work anyway.

More to come as I use it...

 

[dogiex]

Some more niggles I have about MIUI:

The Camera's UI is a disaster, you can't change settings as basic as aspect ratio (which is important in photography) or resolution from the live view, as almost any phone can do. It doesn't even do 16:9 live views well, as most of the view is covered by the shutter button. You also can't set any of this from the Settings screen.
MIUI calls it simplicity, I call it "dumbing down" and "barebones".
How do you open Settings anyhow? Who knows?! Luckily I've set a Menu long-press on the softkey, and holding the softkey in the Camera brings me to its settings, but a newcomer will never guess it. And if you start Camera from the lockscreen, this "shortcut" doesn't work anyway.

More to come as I use it...

In my phone there is 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios.
And the settings can be opened by pressing the menu button as almost in every app you can open menu/settings with that button.
And the lockscreen shortcut works flawlessly on my Mi3 too.

 

[thenext1]

could you please read twice before answering?
never did I say that you can't change the aspect ratio at all: you can change it only in the full settings.
never did I say that the settings don't open at all: they don't open when the camera is opened from the lock screen.
it often happens..... the time required to unlock the screen, open camera, settings, switch aspect ratio, and go back, and you miss the moment.
and where is it explained in MIUI that the menu button doubles as a settings shortcut?
anyway, Samsung or LG camera are much more convenient and faster, it's hard not to recognize that.
Xiaomi must improve.