Anyone use Pocofone without unlock and root? Strangely, I am.

[Pr0grammansage]

I unlocked all Xiaomi phones before the pocophone and installed on them ROMs like Ressurection Remix, Havoc and LOS. I'm playing Ingress and with the first phones from Xiaomi I faced problems with positioning fix. So I had to unlock and install custom roms.
But the positioning on pocophone is working great on stock ROM. Also I didn't know before, that there is a rootless alternative for adaway called dns66 for blocking portal images.
And the best is, that the camera 2 api is activated in stock ROM. Installing GCAM is easy as in a custom ROM before.

The only problem with my pocophone is the navigation bar: it turns often completely white and than I cannot see the symbols anymore. But the unlock is not worth for fixing that.

And maybe I'm going to get Widewine L1 with my locked phone too.

 

[FilipSRB]

What is so special about Pixel Experience compared MIUI?
I have used Pixel Experience with a different phone but did not find it interesting. I preferred other roms like AICP and RR.

I guess what i liked about it is smoothness and stock android. These are the 2 main reasons. MIUI is excellent software but its just not my taste. I like googles software in general and Pixel Experience fits perfectly with this phone.

Sent from my Poco F1 using XDA Labs

 

[Sawoodh76]

How safe Rooted & Custom Rom is? Can anyone Explain?

How safe Rooted & Custom Rom is? Can anyone Explain?

If you don't care about privacy, then it is ok to stay unrooted.
I use banking apps with custom rom, without any problems.

 

[Mafioso]

What is so special about Pixel Experience compared MIUI?
I have used Pixel Experience with a different phone but did not find it interesting. I preferred other roms like AICP and RR.

I have been in same boat since I bought Poco F1, it was smooth, battery life was also excellent compared to my last phone and did not encounter any bugs, so kept it for more than 3 months, although had rooted it to block ads and install viper4android. This was unlike me, as i had been flashoholic using custom roms all my life and i change the rom every couple of days. I also felt I'm too old for custom rom scene and just wanted a stable phone.

Then one day I had lot of time on my hands, I decided to try out Pixel experience ROM since it was so popular here. I immediately liked the simple and clean Android vanilla UI unlike intrusive MIUI with its bloatware however like you said it was too boring and lacked many essential features, can't believe they still don't have different ringtones for diff sims..

Anyway, I went back to MIUI after couple of days of PE because of this but this time the bloatedness and intrusive UI in MIUI was more evident. I tried to debloat it however unsuccessful so i tried miui custom roms like ambassadi and miroom which were better than stock however still UI was not clean.

So back to my roots lol, ROM after ROM i flashed. Finding bugs or stability issues, after which I settled on crDroid. Its amazing ROM Im using it as daily driver for more than 4 months and not flashing frequently either. I started with crdroid 5.3 used it for couple of months then out of my mistake only flashed other kernel after which things started going downhill. So did clean flash of v5.5 and using it since.
What I liked about crdroid (or any stable aosp/lineage rom)
+ Clean Debloated UI
+ Dark Mode
+ Gcam (Sanity Mod) takes better photos than MiUI stock cam. Not sure about videos, I dont have any complaints but user says MiUI does it better. I don't care about them much anyway.
+ crDroid is as stable as MIUI and feature rich at same time.
+ POCO Launcher is really good, can be installed from play store on any ROM. That minimizes difference between ROMs
+ Use fluidNG to simulte MIUI full screen gesture feature. It works as good if not better.

By above 2, I'm getting best of both worlds IMO.

I think you can get gCam on MIUI roms also and i think MIUI has dark mode now as well however its clean UI which sells other ROMs for me.

Anyway, if you plan to stick to MIUI you can still try a custom kernel like franco, it did improve my battery life.

 

[luizlee86]

I was a root/flash afficionado lol
Installed several custom roms since my first Galaxy S, S II, Note II, Z3 Compact and then Moto G5 Plus. But even with the G5 Plus I just flashed custom ROMs when it became evidente we wouldn't get official updates.
The F1 is my first MIUI phone and I'm really liking it. Sometimes I do think of rooting it just to debloat and get rid of ads (specially installing Vanced Youtube) but I fell the same as OP... too much trouble to remove something I can definitely live with.
I'm only going to play with kernels, custom roms and stuff when Xiaomi stops supporting it.

 

[lockhrt999]

I'm one of this group. I chose poco because xda support. But when I got my mobile, most of the ROMs were not matured enough. EIS wasn't available then in non-MIUI roms. So I waited, Meanwhile my data built up on miui. Now I don't want set up the mobile from the start and hence still stuck with MIUI. I don't like MIUI though. It's a stupid skin. It misses many of the core functions that are standard in stock android.

 

[locolyric]

i am until the gps issue . sooo frustrating . current still on miui but eu version.

 

[shicomm]

Miui had grown up a lot but the battery drain made the new rom a must have for me..

 

[lockhrt999]

Miui had grown up a lot but the battery drain made the new rom a must have for me..

Yes. I'm charging my mobile twice a day now.

 

[Exclusive133]

I wonder if people that hate miui because of the spyware use pixel experience, or google search, youtube, facebook etc, that would be ironic.
I was on the same boat as OP, and i wasn't planning to root, the performance on miui was fine and i find boring doing all the steps unlocking bootloader etc.
The reason i unlocked and changed roms is because miui is annoying.
There are notifications you can't disable but the worst thing was the aggressive memory management.
If your phone was auto locked in the middle of something, goodbye. And there isn't even a 'caffeine' option to keep it awake. The status bar of miui is also terrible.

 

[lockhrt999]

I wonder if people that hate miui because of the spyware use pixel experience, or google search, youtube, facebook etc, that would be ironic.
I was on the same boat as OP, and i wasn't planning to root, the performance on miui was fine and i find boring doing all the steps unlocking bootloader etc.
The reason i unlocked and changed roms is because miui is annoying.
There are notifications you can't disable but the worst thing was the aggressive memory management.
If your phone was auto locked in the middle of something, goodbye. And there isn't even a 'caffeine' option to keep it awake. The status bar of miui is also terrible.

I don't mind getting spied from MIUI or china. It's not like it's worse than getting spied from google and USA (creator of taliban and ISIS). If I ever did root and custom rom that would be for same reasons as yours.

 

[lockhrt999]

I got rid off few apps and it has improved the battery backup in double folds. Dunno which app caused the battery drain because it doesn't show up in battery settings.

 

[coolbiza]

As many here i used many custom roms on many phones from samsung s2 on. This is first one i left on stock now 10 months of usage. Simple, i have no reason to go custom or even root...
Vanced youtube working, gcam working, battery life compared to my customized and fine tuned previous phones exellent, many setting as average custom rom or even more, relative frequent updates, posible to debloat via pc from java app is a dream (even google apps)...
This MIUI to me feels like im already on a custom rom
And funy is that I bought this phone mainly because xiaomi told that unlocking and installing custom roms is not voiding waranty. lol

Cheers!!