I was randomly looking for something in a cupboard and came across my first Android device purchased in June 2010. This was the HTC Desire which cost me about £330, basically a flagship at the time.
After charging for a short while I was able to power it on and the MIUI custom rom I’d flashed back in 2011 booted up.
At the time it was believed a group of Chinese enthusiasts we’re behind MIUI, at the time Xiaomi had never released a smartphone and we’re basically unknown.
I perceived MIUI to be lightyears ahead of any other Android rom, it had the speed and stability CyanogenMod, however with a UI that didn’t look like it belonged in the Windows 95 era.
MIUI also had toggles in the notification menu, something which later became standard on AOSP Android.
The settings menu’s we’re also much more logically laid out, certainly in more AOSP roms, I seem to remember the settings menu been a bit of a mess at the time.
I liked the Notification light control on MIUI, I could change the colour and set it to always be on, something I still do today with my OnePlus 5T on LineageOS 17.1.
Taking screenshots without root was something MIUI also did, I seem to remember on other roms I had an app called Shake Me (i think was the name) which would take a screenshot when you shook the phone. That did require root however.
Battery life was also fantastic with MIUI on the HTC Desire compared to the stock HTC Sense rom, even more so when I upgraded to MIUI based on Android 2.3 and could take advantage of c2dm push notifications on Trillian. That allowed me to stay signed in to MSN Messenger 24/7 and receive push notifications on my phone without the battery draining in a couple of hours.
You need to keep in mind back then WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and other messaging apps were not really a thing, a lot of people still used instant messaging on their PC’s, so been able to take advantage of that on a mobile device was a nice bonus.
Mobile devices also had such limited internal storage for apps back then, so a lot of roms would move data to an EXT partition on the SD card if you had created one, allowing you to install more than a couple of apps.
At the time I could never imagine getting an Android phone that didn’t run MIUI, however my next phone was the Galaxy Nexus as Android 4.0 kind of blew me away. I ended up using CyanogenMod full time, which made my next phone, the OnePlus One very appealing to have official support out the box. I ended up flashing LineageOS to the OnePlus and flashed it on my 5T from day one. I certainly plan to get an Xiaomi phone in the future though as my brothers Mi 9T is really nice, I love the popup camera on that too.
Anyway that concludes this little trip down memory lane, hopefully you enjoy the screenshots from a near enough 10 year old Android rom: [https://imgur.com/a/rfPzTSX](https://imgur.com/a/rfPzTSX)
MIUI was the king, animated wallpaper, screen, background, mp3 player…
Nice!
One word: Lockscreen themes. I was blown away instantly. Thanks for the trip down the memory lane.
So nostalgic
Damn. You just reminded me of flashing my first custom ROM on a Huawei Ideos lol
Cool, the Desire was my first Android phone back then. Also installed MIUI on it and I agree with you on the excellent battery life.
I remember reading an article in XDA about the guys behind MIUI setting out to market their own phones. And here I am using a Redmi Note 4X for the past 3 years 😀
Had this on my droid 2 global and kindle fire. No other software looked this Good at the time.
Pepperidge farm remembers
Had miui on a Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo. It became 10x faster.
Miui 6 on Lg g3
Miui is still years ahead of other ROM.
Isn’t stable (some bugs are present as all os have them) or secure (as it’s Chinese ROM and there are claim of it isn’t secure) but I’m ok with it because it let me use my Device differently than the common herd of people.
I literally love the floating window app for many stuff I can’t even remember the most use of it when I use it for coc(if I want to just logged in so nobody won’t attack) and do other minimum – ok stuff.
I too love whole screen rather than those ugly hole(thanks apple for going all whole screen.im ok with those bar like old devices have .but I hate hole in my device). motorized camera soon will be gone as there will be device with indisplay camera as oppo& Xiaomi are trying them.
I remember another extra from my M1S era: you could place your icons literally anywhere, not just position them in a grid.
I had a wall paper of a desk, and note app placed on the desk, alarm clock looked like it’s hanging on the wall, screen brightnes is adjusted by pulling down the shades on the window and so on.
Never seen such thing anymore
Floating window is a blessing when I want to listen to videos which won’t run in the background while driving
Good old days.
i might get hate but i love MiUi. it’s my first Xiaomi phone and the experience was and is amazing. of course the battery efficiency could be a lot better but it’s so fast and snappy and it has a lot i mean a lot of cool features (and useless ones).
i had LG phone before and an old Huawei phone before that and i have an ipad air between these select ROM MiUI was best “for me”
(knocks on the wood so Miui don’t crash on me after this comment)
MIUI was the only reason for me to buy HTC and Samsung
Why wil you get hate.
As it’s miui forum.and all the people who have use miui and other custom ROM will prefer miui if they love customisation and more freedom.
My wife had HTC desire and I had a Google nexus one which was basically an HTC desire with a track ball that had a multicolor notification led in it. fun times. 1st truly useful smartphone era began about then. I remember horrible experiences with Sony ericsson UIQ symbian before that
Having just come from an LG V20, I can honestly say, MUI sucks!
I still run a custom rom on my phone Redmi note 5 pro I’m currently running ressurection remix
HTC did some pretty nice ui too. Especially the weather on the lock screen.
I had a. Acer liquid metal, a shitty phone but I that’s where I first installed the Miui. After that I loved it so much I bought a mi2s. Awesome UI, it was really ahead if the competition at the time, and even know it has a lot of cool stuff like floating windows
I used MIUI on my Note 1 before Xiaomi was a thing in Germany.
Trillian! Long time no see.
HTC sense ui is my fav
i think it’s just the feeling i get that not many people is satisfied with MiUi right now. (for good reasons)
Imagine CyanogenMod making their phones 🙁
Yeah, I’ve consistently flashed MIUI on every phone I’ve had since, if they weren’t Xiaomi devices
The raindrops on the lock screen on rainy days was really pretty!