All those features can be replicated on Android, pure Android looks cleaner and has a better UI, miui tries too hard, most of the time it’s buggy, it has a bad memory management system.

You mean the aggressive ram management always killing apps in the background, even if optimization is turned off? Or the battery drain caused by MIUI? I liked MIUI, but now with stock android I don’t have to do crazy workarounds, just to stop companion app for my smartwatch being killed by MIUI. It can just run forever without my interference.

More choice is always good, but definitely this move doesn’t scream more choice to me.

Meaning they need to offer more for MIUI, give what user want and not ignore them like they did to all low end model.

You can try using xposed+gravity box.

I like both stock and miui. I have a redmi 4x, got it about 3 weeks ago. At first glance it looks like an ios ripoff, and even if it is very ios inspired, miui is not a bad interface. Yes, it’s heavy and you need 3gb of ram when the same phone with the same specs on Android one would need just 2 to be as smooth, but i like it. Regarding ram management, just tweak your settings. By default the ram management is atrocious, but you can easily fix that if you take some time. That said, i prefer android one. To me, the only thing that is missing is a BUILT IN theme engine as efficient as that one with root (can’t remember the name) for the rest, i prefer a simpler experience, and if i want more features i can add them with root and xposed.
I’ll probably flash a stock based custom rom someday, when the phone will start slowing down, but for now i’m enjoying miui.
As for the poll, this is a pretty lame move from xiaomi, i understand they didn’t expect their miui to lose, but it’s childish to delete the poll like android one never won.

I really enjoy stock android, but for me Android phone means customization. I have a S7e and really enjoy the themes I can install, change fonts, colours, etc. But I am the kind of guy who gets bored very easily and I realy like changing things, changes that I don’t know I was able to do on stock android.

The only reason for me to really want stock Android is if I got more frequent stable updates to Android. As I am with Mtk processor, I’m stuck with Android 6 and learned to never buy Mediatek ever again. As for MIUI, I don’t hate it, but I’m not in love with it either. I like functions it has that stock usually doesn’t have and need an extra app, but other than that there is really no difference to me.

As a casual user, Ive gotten used to miui and i really hope Xiaomi will work on it.

oneplus target isnt china. thay have vivo and oppo of the same group for that.

I am fine with MIUI myself but it is whatever, I’d be down with stock or at the very least use a custom ROM in worst case.

Unholy unlocking process? I didn’t really have much trouble with mine, just as long as you wait the 72 hours it’s not particularly difficult. Obviously it’s more inconvenient than others but still. Personally I quite like miui, comes with more features than stock, but as long as you’re buying a fairly mainstream Xiaomi device then you’ll probably have a few ROMs to choose from.

That’s part of the problem — ideally it shouldn’t be more than an options setting and/or something along the lines of “fastboot oem unlock”. The request, the wait time, the uncertainty of whether or not the permission to unlock is granted is just unnecessary hassle.

I understand that it’s not a big deal for some but for me it’s a show stopper. I would have long moved on to a MI 6 (specifically the ceramic / gold version) if there was a decent ROM option and the certainty that I can flash it right away. Without both it’s a bit of an expensive experiment.

Personally unlocked my Mi5S Plus and Redmi Note 4 in mere minutes of requesting a bootloader unlock. Half of all OEMs do it this way, a quick look at xda forums of a device shows the current status of the custom rom support and bootloader unlock time. If you stay informed it’s not a big deal.

I don’t view it as a problem now, but it might be in the long-term when companies disappear or go bankrupt with no way to unlock the phones.

Agreed – categorically unlockable would be worse. I’m coming from Nexus devices and with Xiaomi I’m only at 33% success rate, maybe that’s why I sound somewhat negative. I requested permission to unlock my first Redmi 3 twice and got it denied twice (no reasons provided) and I was luckier with the Mi 5, got the permission in the first try. Both the miui.com and the xda forum have quite a few posts from people who got their unlock request denied.

As for the Mi 6 ROMs – I’m watching xda pretty closely and haven’t seen any stable ROMs. LOS 15.1 is from December last year and while Pixel Experience does look promising it’s still fairly new and there are quite some reports about issues with encryption (a must have for me as it’s a prerequisite for my company’s MobileIron MDM). I’ll just wait a bit longer I guess.

I’m new to Xiaomi devices, but what hurdles do they have to go through in order to install custom roms?

Lame! The Mi A1 with stock Android is a great device. I look forward to them continuing along this line and getting a new one every few years since the Nexus line was discontinued.