Xiaomi Mi3 Owners Thread - tips, tricks, updates and everything eles

corwill

corwill wrote: »

Just updated to AOSP 4.10.15 OTA. Battery performance so far isn't as good as MiUi v6 had gotten over the last few weeks, but not by so much that I'm ready to go back to it. Everything else about it is what you'd expect from vanilla android, much smoother and quicker than MiUi. Hopefully battery performance will catch up shortly. Unless something goes horribly wrong, I'll probably stick with this AOSP ROM until a stable cyanogenmod emerges.

So I've stuck with this ROM for a month, and its been great. Up to version 4.11.4 now, and battery performance is at least as good as with MiUi, while everything else about it is like having a disguised, zippier Nexus 5. "Ivan" is already working on Lollipop.

uck51js9zml2yt

corwill wrote: »

Don't feed it to the chiseller this time!

How long did delivery take?

Delivery took about a month.

I got my phone back from Wizz today. They did a great job and it only cost €20.
I'm really considering putting it up for sale and getting the Zopo 3X.

Its currently updating to 4.11.14

corwill

George Rancid Literature wrote: »

Delivery took about a month.

I got my phone back from Wizz today. They did a great job and it only cost €20.
I'm really considering putting it up for sale and getting the Zopo 3X.

Its currently updating to 4.11.14

I'm looking at the Zopo too, looks like a great deal. If the Mi3 had 4g, I'd stick with it. No sign of the fdd-lte Mi4 yet, and it'll be a lot more expensive than the 3X in any event.

kifi

I've just ordered this from Xiaomi online shop. How long does it generally take to deliver? Are they reliable?

Thanks

uck51js9zml2yt

kifi wrote: »

I've just ordered this from Xiaomi online shop. How long does it generally take to deliver? Are they reliable?

Thanks

2 or 3 days but as its the weekend now,middle of next week.

kifi

George Rancid Literature wrote: »

2 or 3 days but as its the weekend now,middle of next week.

Thanks. I'm buying it for the wife - are there any things I should to do to make it easier for her to use or are there some neat features I should show her how to use? I ask because she is not very tech savy, and I'm not a whole lot better when it comes to phones in particular!!

uck51js9zml2yt

kifi wrote: »

Thanks. I'm buying it for the wife - are there any things I should to do to make it easier for her to use or are there some neat features I should show her how to use? I ask because she is not very tech savy, and I'm not a whole lot better when it comes to phones in particular!!

Read the start of the thread. It's all you need to know.

kifi

Got it today (ordered it Friday), impressed with the fast delivery. Interesting brown cardboard type packaging. Happy to see that's one area where they might be making savings to ensure a quality phone is available for a good price.

Does this phone lock to the first sim that is inserted?

uck51js9zml2yt

kifi wrote: »

Got it today (ordered it Friday), impressed with the fast delivery. Interesting brown cardboard type packaging. Happy to see that's one area where they might be making savings to ensure a quality phone is available for a good price.

Does this phone lock to the first sim that is inserted?

No
But read the first few pages of the thread on all the lessons we learnt in the early days.
Theres lots of links to video etc.

If anythings not covered in those pages(possible but unlikely) ask away:D

Digital Solitude

kifi wrote: »

Got it today (ordered it Friday), impressed with the fast delivery. Interesting brown cardboard type packaging. Happy to see that's one area where they might be making savings to ensure a quality phone is available for a good price.

Does this phone lock to the first sim that is inserted?

Dear god do not put an empty sim card adapter into the sim slot.

kifi

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Dear god do not put an empty sim card adapter into the sim slot.

Thanks, it's a full size sim I have in any case.

fixXxer

Is xiaomishop the best place to get an Mi3 before Christmas? I know other places are cheaper but if I go for it I need it by the 16th of December at the latest.

Digital Solitude

fixxxer wrote: »

Is xiaomishop the best place to get an Mi3 before Christmas? I know other places are cheaper but if I go for it I need it by the 16th of December at the latest.

If you order from pretty much anywhere that offers DHL as a shipping option you'll have it in under a week.

Get the price, add twenty euro. Multiply that by 1.23 and then add another 15 last. That's how much you'll pay, customs included

uck51js9zml2yt

Digital Solitude wrote: »

If you order from pretty much anywhere that offers DHL as a shipping option you'll have it in under a week.

Get the price, add twenty euro. Multiply that by 1.23 and then add another 15 last. That's how much you'll pay, customs included

I have one for sale if your interested. Only used it for a few weeks.

fixXxer

George Rancid Literature wrote:

I have one for sale if your interested. Only used it for a few weeks.

Why are you selling, if I may ask?

aaronm13

Got my refund off Aliexpress from the singles day scam I got caught for so don't have time to order from China. Just ordered off Xiaomishop.com. Pretty much payed double for what my original order from Aliexpress was so was a costly lesson. Payed 155 euro with discounts I had but just had to fork out 270 euro but at least I'll have it in time for Xmas.

Digital Solitude

Finally got my Mi3, only bought it back in September...

Electronic Partner in Galway fixed the SIM slot for me for €80

Think it was fair enough after inspecting the phone myself

Anyways! Delighted with it! Can anyone recommend AOSP for it?

corwill

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Finally got my Mi3, only bought it back in September...

Electronic Partner in Galway fixed the SIM slot for me for €80

Think it was fair enough after inspecting the phone myself

Anyways! Delighted with it! Can anyone recommend AOSP for it?

I've been running an AOSP KitKat ROM by a Xiaomi developer called Ivan (who it seems is doing this with some sort of blessing from his employers) for a few months now - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=92484482&postcount=233

It's up to version 4.11.4 - http://en.miui.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=59408&highlight=aosp%2B4.11.4

I find it really good, happy with it as a daily driver. Battery life isn't quite as good as with the last version of MiUi v6 dev rom that I had running, but I can get 2 days out of it with light to moderate use, and a full day and a bit with heavy use. So still pretty good, or at least it seems so to me, after my old Galaxy S3.

The camera app on it is Google Camera, unfortunately not a patch on the MiUi camera app. I've tried loading the apk for the former from a few different sources, but I've not gotten it to work. The closest (free) alternative to the MiUi camera app that I've found is: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2665714 Almost as good the stock MiUi app, except a bit slower to focus, and I haven't figured out how to get it to work as a proper default camera app, for things like opening it from the lock screen wide a left to right swipe, or going from it to the gallery directly.

Other than that, it kicks the hole off of MiUi, or at least the versions I was running up to early October. Much quicker and smoother, and none of MiUi's RAM-hogging. Version 4.11.4 has been as stable and bug-free as any ROM I've ever run, stock included. It's like a Nexus 5 in disguise, except better.

It doesn't look like it's getting any more updates, though, as Ivan has been working on a Lollipop AOSP ROM - http://en.miui.com/thread-68280-1-1.html. I haven't tried it yet, as it seems to suffer from a number of bugs, especially from random reboots. There's only been the one version so far, I suspect he's waiting for Google to sort Lollipop out themselves first before he goes at it again. I'm a bit "meh" on the whole Material Design thing, and the thread on here about Lollipop is full of complaints about various issues, so I'm happy to wait a while.

I haven't tried anything else, as any of the other ROMs I've read about on XDA seem to suffer from the same issues which arise from not having access to kernels. The Mi3 kernels are supposedly being released in Q1 2015, according to no lesser source than Hugo Barra, which should make a massive difference to the availability of stable custom ROMs. Xiaomi released the kernels for the Redmi 1S today, so hopefully he'll be as good as his word.

Digital Solitude

Not going to quote that! But thanks Corwill! I can't even get CWM installed "Cannot install at this time" or something.

Loaded Miui v6 Dev just there so hopefully that'll male some difference!

Digital Solitude

Never mind I got it AOSP here I come

Digital Solitude

Never going to be happy with this. Turned on true dual boot mode, which completely wiped the memory, including my backups Which I can't recover as windows doesn't assign it a drive letter. So now I'm heading for Cyanogenmod :pac: I'm a disaster with this stuff

corwill

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Never going to be happy with this. Turned on true dual boot mode, which completely wiped the memory, including my backups Which I can't recover as windows doesn't assign it a drive letter. So now I'm heading for Cyanogenmod :pac: I'm a disaster with this stuff

Yeah, I've had a few hair raising moments like that. The only way to be sure is to copy backups to an external location before commencing mickeying about with new ROMs and the like. Let us know how you get on with Cyanogemod on it.

Digital Solitude

corwill wrote: »

Yeah, I've had a few hair raising moments like that. The only way to be sure is to copy backups to an external location before commencing mickeying about with new ROMs and the like. Let us know how you get on with Cyanogemod on it.

Turning off True Dual Boot gave me back my old filesystem. This phone is scary and confusing.

I can only find my backups using the ClockworkMod app and restoring directly from there, so I'm going to backup all my stuff and dual boot Cyanogen and AOSP! I'll post a review if it happens

*EDIT* For anyone who runs into a similar issue, backups are stored locally in
/data/media/clockwordmod/backup/
Starting at root

They have to be copied to the emulated SD Card at /sdcard to backup to a PC

Digital Solitude

CyanogenMod 11 is a disaster. Reboots in my pocket 5-6 times a day, very buggy, freezes quite often. Battery life is relatively poor, getting a full day from 8-10 on medium usage. Its hard to judge because of the reboots, and the fact its in Deep Sleep for 7 hours when I'm at school and then it's being used for 6 straight afterwards. Reboots only take about 30 seconds so its not a major inconvenience but obviously would be for some people

CM12 is worse again, except this time it takes about 8 minutes to boot and you could cook an egg on the screen, bluetooth and NFC don't work as of yet.
Its god damn beautiful though, I'll probably test it out again when it becomes more stable.
Obviously not CM's fault but as CM12 is 5.0.1 it doesn't support the Xposed Framework.

When it works, its great, I much prefer it to AOSP. The problem is it just doesn't.

So I think I'm reinstalling AOSP now, the phone doesn't pick up my backups correctly anymore but I might keep MiUi now anyways if its MiUi6.

Recommendation: Try CM11 if you wish, hopefully you won't hit the rebooting errors I did, leave CM12 until it becomes more stable.



The shared system dual boot also seems to be for 2 versions of the same OS, e.g MiUi5 and MiUi6 worked, but a combonation of CM, AOSP and MiUi led to bootloops on whichever OS was booted second. E.G If I booted CM11 and returned to CWM Recovery, then AOSP would bootloop, and vice versa

,mnb

I love the phone have it 3 months now. Yesterday, when went to charge it, had difficulty connecting charger to the phone smoothly. Eventually got it to connect smoothly but it is not taking the charge. No red light in top right corner. It seems to be a hardware problem, possible the charging area damaged from my fiddling/initially trying to put the charger in upside down when it didnt connect the right way.
What can I do. I bought it on ebay from Hong Kong. Is there a shop in Dublin that would repair?
really want to get it back up and running.

corwill

,mnb wrote: »

I love the phone have it 3 months now. Yesterday, when went to charge it, had difficulty connecting charger to the phone smoothly. Eventually got it to connect smoothly but it is not taking the charge. No red light in top right corner. It seems to be a hardware problem, possible the charging area damaged from my fiddling/initially trying to put the charger in upside down when it didnt connect the right way.
What can I do. I bought it on ebay from Hong Kong. Is there a shop in Dublin that would repair?
really want to get it back up and running.

You've probably tried this already, but have you tried charging with a cable other than the one that came with the phone? I found that the cable I got with mine gave up the ghost after not a whole lot of use.

If it's the socket on the phone, that might not be that big a job for one of the places around town. I don't have a recommendation for you, I've been lucky enough with my phones to date not to need a repair, but someone on the board will be able to point in the direction of someone decent. I found Back From The Future on Aungier Street good for a couple of laptop repairs down the years, and I know they do iPhones, but if they won't do it, they might refer you on.

corwill

Digital Solitude wrote: »

CyanogenMod 11 is a disaster. Reboots in my pocket 5-6 times a day, very buggy, freezes quite often. Battery life is relatively poor, getting a full day from 8-10 on medium usage. Its hard to judge because of the reboots, and the fact its in Deep Sleep for 7 hours when I'm at school and then it's being used for 6 straight afterwards. Reboots only take about 30 seconds so its not a major inconvenience but obviously would be for some people

CM12 is worse again, except this time it takes about 8 minutes to boot and you could cook an egg on the screen, bluetooth and NFC don't work as of yet.
Its god damn beautiful though, I'll probably test it out again when it becomes more stable.
Obviously not CM's fault but as CM12 is 5.0.1 it doesn't support the Xposed Framework.

When it works, its great, I much prefer it to AOSP. The problem is it just doesn't.

So I think I'm reinstalling AOSP now, the phone doesn't pick up my backups correctly anymore but I might keep MiUi now anyways if its MiUi6.

Recommendation: Try CM11 if you wish, hopefully you won't hit the rebooting errors I did, leave CM12 until it becomes more stable.



The shared system dual boot also seems to be for 2 versions of the same OS, e.g MiUi5 and MiUi6 worked, but a combonation of CM, AOSP and MiUi led to bootloops on whichever OS was booted second. E.G If I booted CM11 and returned to CWM Recovery, then AOSP would bootloop, and vice versa

Until devs get their hands on the kernel, the likes of those unofficial CM ports are going be fairly flaky. You're probably on AOSP already, so you'll have made up your on mind on it, but I've found it very stable.

True Dual Boot just doesn't like non-MiUi ROMs. I think it was just intended to allow MiUi devs to run 2 versions of MiUi, and that's it. I know AOSP worked much, much better after I went back to single boot.

unaaine

,mnb wrote: »

I love the phone have it 3 months now. Yesterday, when went to charge it, had difficulty connecting charger to the phone smoothly. Eventually got it to connect smoothly but it is not taking the charge. No red light in top right corner. It seems to be a hardware problem, possible the charging area damaged from my fiddling/initially trying to put the charger in upside down when it didnt connect the right way.
What can I do. I bought it on ebay from Hong Kong. Is there a shop in Dublin that would repair?
really want to get it back up and running.

If it's not the cable, try Alex in PhoneWizz (0871223112) on Moore Street - Henry St. end. I find him really good he's repaired a few phones for me over the years and as far as I know he replaced the screen on a Mi3 for someone here in the not too distant past. He's definitely familiar with Xiaomi phones.

Digital Solitude

electronicrepair.ie in galway fixed the SIM slot in mine, so they'd take a look anyways

corwill

I've decided to let my Mi3 64gb go, not without regret, a great bit of kit - http://www.adverts.ie/7339074

k123456

Noob Question, just purchased Mi3

Installed play store, google plus gmail etc

Sim inserted

However I store all my contacts under Google not Sim, cant see my Google contacts

I have gone into Contacts, settings, can see only
Viber
Mi Ac
Sim card

but not Google ?



About phone, : 4.4.4 ktu84p
Miui 6210


How do I add my google contacts , please

Digital Solitude

Go into the contacts settings, and you should be able to find a setting for contacts to display, and you need to tick your google account there.

That's how it was on android 4.2 so hopefully it hasn't changed much

k123456

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Go into the contacts settings, and you should be able to find a setting for contacts to display, and you need to tick your google account there.

That's how it was on android 4.2 so hopefully it hasn't changed much

Hi Tried that but cant see option to display or add google contacts

I see
settings
contacts
contacts to display, only, Viber, Mi and Sim

No google ?

Digital Solitude

k123456 wrote: »

Hi Tried that but cant see option to display or add google contacts

I see
settings
contacts
contacts to display, only, Viber, Mi and Sim

No google ?

Go to the phones settings, accounts, google, and then click the email address the contacts are linked to, and make sure that 'Contacts' is ticked

Digital Solitude

Ivan's AOSP is now on Lollipop by the way for anyone wondering. The 5.0.2 version has no random reboots and seems okay for heat and battery life so far.

Xposed doesn't work for me but it does for others so it's pot luck from what I can tell

k123456

Hi Digital Solitude
I go to settings
accounts

Under acs

I see Mi Ac
ALL
Add
and Sync (under Sync , sync is ON)


When i click on all I see Google, (black G icon)
and Viber

When i click on Google, I see my gmail id
and then these are all on (ie orange ticK)
App
Gmail
Google +
Google + photos
Google + uploads
People Details

Digital Solitude

And does your Gmail for example, Sync as it should?

Are you using MiUi?

k123456

Digital Solitude wrote: »

And does your Gmail for example, Sync as it should?

Are you using MiUi?

Hi Gmail does sync, and using Miui

Digital Solitude

k123456 wrote: »

Hi Gmail does sync, and using Miui

Maybe try deleting your Google account from the phone and then re-registering it. After that I haven't a clue

k123456

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Maybe try deleting your Google account from the phone and then re-registering it. After that I haven't a clue

Ok will try that, Thanks

k123456

Hi Can't get Google contacts to display with Mini.. Could someone please point me in the direction of an Stock Android Rom. Need one that's stable, fast, good battery and GPS performance.

Thanks

Digital Solitude

k123456 wrote: »

Hi Can't get Google contacts to display with Mini.. Could someone please point me in the direction of an Stock Android Rom. Need one that's stable, fast, good battery and GPS performance.

Thanks

http://forum.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-mi-3/development/lollipop-5-0-aosp-mi3w-ivan-t2967234

Lollipop ROM, dunno about the GPS as I don't use it, but I find it faultless

corwill

Digital Solitude wrote: »

http://forum.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-mi-3/development/lollipop-5-0-aosp-mi3w-ivan-t2967234

Lollipop ROM, dunno about the GPS as I don't use it, but I find it faultless

The same guy's KitKat ROM is spot on as well, found that GPS was grand with it.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-mi-3/general/aosp-rom-leaked-t2876646/page142

Google Camera isn't as good as the MiUi camera app, though.

corwill

k123456 wrote: »

Hi Can't get Google contacts to display with Mini.. Could someone please point me in the direction of an Stock Android Rom. Need one that's stable, fast, good battery and GPS performance.

Thanks

It's just bizaare that you can no longer sync Google contacts to the stock contacts app on MiUi, so much so that it has to be intentional on xiaomi's part.

But if that's the only issue you're having with MiUi, you might consider downloading an alternative contacts app, something like Contacts+ or Simpler Contacts.

unaaine

Dropped my mi3 yesterday and cracked the screen at the corner badly enough so that the capacitive buttons don't work anymore. I'll have to get a new screen and seem to remember that someone here has replaced their mi3 screen. Was wondering where is best to buy from and how long it takes. Have seen lots of options on Aliexpress but would prefer a recommendation if poss. Thanks!

Digital Solitude

It was tatranska if I'm correct. Dunno if he's still following this thread, but he's the OP so you could PM him

unaaine

Digital Solitude wrote: »

It was tatranska if I'm correct. Dunno if he's still following this thread, but he's the OP so you could PM him

Thanks DS will do that

k123456

Hi Folks Noob question from me

Thinking of installing one of these Roms, but not sure how to

Looked on xda-developers.com, for a how to install post, but could not find one


Could someone give me a link, or pointers please


http://forum.xda-developers.com/xiao...-ivan-t2967234

http://forum.xda-developers.com/xiao...876646/page142

I currently have Miui (stock ) installed , and not sure I have the correct recovery software installed

Digital Solitude

Broke my screen again

Did anyone have an issue with static build up under the screen on their Mi3, e.g. Ghost touches when you use a certain charger.

Last screen was plagued with it, but I'll keep my Mi3 if the new one doesn't have that Any excuse to hold onto it

metroburgers

anyone have a spare screen they can spare? :pac: broke mine too