This is my personal experience with Last Hope RC5
WARNING: Get ready for a wall of text.
During the MIUIv5 times I did a new flash every week. Getting Last Hope RC5 was my first flash after more than a year. Once MIUIv6 came I lost interest since the design (in my personal opinion) deteriorated, some of the auxiliary apps were needlessly thrown away and rewritten with a different set of bugs, while nobody actually cared about our little phone anymore. The same trend continued with MIUIv7. Now with Xiaomi taking inspiration from Apple even in the lock-down department, I think that my first Xiaomi phone will be also the last. But then, a glimmer of last hope came to make that little phone cool again
As a long time user of MIUI 4.12.5 (hope I remember that correctly) I thought I'd give my view and my opinion on the question "Is Last Hope better than MIUI?"
After using Android 2.3 (HTC Sense), 4.0 (CM), 4.1 (CM), then getting Mi2S with 4.1 (MIUI), trying out the 5.1 Lollipop is a whole new world.
As first, how did I install (in case some were put off solely by that reason):
- download MiFlash from (obigota.d<DOT>miui<DOT>com/tools/MiPhone20151028.exe - sorry, can't post the links in human-redable format...)
- download tgz (mega<DOT>nz/#!n4pTESDK!YpUXY6zBSiW5fjI5nWXvKKti_gkkCbwmYOSZG4BTlnE)
- unpack tgz into C:\flash (so that it directly contains the .bat files)
- start the MiFlash, click the small arrow near "Browse" and to the first row select flash_all.bat (this will delete ALL the data on the phone)
- start flashing - may fail at first, second try worked for me
- download TWRP 3.0.0.1 and flash it into the phone
- then use the instructions for installation of this ROM
Now, the actual comments on the ROM. Note: I can't humanly test ALL the options the phone/ROMs have, so this is NOT a complete or definite review of the Last Hope ROM. YMMV.
What did I gain (what's good), in order of most beneficial to least beneficial:
- power saving battery mode (which I loved and last had in something like MIUI 4.5.xy something)
- newer Android than 4.1 -> I can use apps requiring Android 4.2 and newer! First think that comes to mind is LastPass with its Auto-Fill that just never worked on MIUIv5.
- newer Android -> all the newer Android (and CM) features
- single-click USB tethering (from quick settings shade)
- better notifications pull-down
- app drawer
- compass in quick settings pull-down (as opposed to an app in MIUI)
- less obtrusive Opera Max starting its VPN on startup
- no more resetting of default apps from my selection to the Xiaomi built-ins
- no more shady stuff such as "click Activate to enable the cloud client"
What did I lose (what could be better), in order of most painful to least painful:
- HDR mode in camera (this and the second one with transfer speeds are really, really hard to live without)
- display of current wifi/cell data transfer speeds in status bar
- single-click switching of mobile data status
- built-in call recorder (there is some call recording related option in Dialer, but no way to enable it or see the recordings)
- torch on long home button press when in lockscreen (but it's available in quick settings pull-down)
- folders in default launcher preview only first 4 icons (MIUI launcher has preview of 9 icons)
- alarm list is needlesly big/spacy and doesn't fit with the rest of the GUI... I can barely see 3 alarms at once
- lost the ability to "lock" an app in memory by listing all open apps and pulling on its icon
If you could point me to reasonable solutions to ^ these ^ issues, especially the first two, I'd be glad. I can definitely explore myself, but if you have some tried & trusted solution, that would be even better. As I understand it, it's currently not recommended to use Xposed, so I avoid it.
Bugs I encountered after ~three weeks of usage:
- after a few days I get so memory leaked that even launcher has to start again after each unlock
- got "can't connect camera" only once in all that time, reboot fixed it
- can't create a new desktop to the left of the leftmost desktop
- display battery percentage inside the symbol doesn't work (displays either next to it or not at all)
- Wi-Fi logon takes subjectively longer than on MIUI
- data connection speed on 2G seems slower than on MIUI (3G is fine), Opera Max user for long time
I don't think any of the issues aside of "can't connect camera" can be provided logs for. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I would like to thank
@bugers (and also
@M1cha before him) for his work. I was frequently lurking this topic since RC2, but didn't think it's the right time until now. Were it not for you, Ubuntu Aquaris would be probably shipping to me right now.
TL;DR:
That sums up my opinion on the question "Is Last Hope better than MIUI?". For me, yes. For you... it's very much possible.
