Back at the start of May, I jumped on the chance to start using the Xiaomi Mi 5 Pro, which is my first experience with Xiaomi phones. In fact, other than a few of their respectable power banks, and a “not-completely-hacked-yet-to-do-what-I-want” Box 3rd Generation (which is due its own separate review/post; read the article if you are asking “what the heck is that?”); this is my first Xiaomi product.

Nevertheless, I will prattle for quite a bit before diving into the actual usage experience thereof, ranting for a bit and providing background as well. If you wish to skip this, just jump directly to the actual article.

The Predecessor

Back in October 2014, I sprung for a dual-SIM LG G3 D857, which I promptly “flashed into” a D858HK (because, you know, Google Apps)… The “D858HK” (fka D857) served me well after a troublesome start, including fussing with root and everything in between, just to get it working like I needed it to (i.e. firewalled, Xposed, and adfree‘d)… The Lollipop updates in Q1 2015 were no fun either, requiring manual updating just to retain the old “hackable” boot loader to retain root…

Batteries Not Included

Q4 2015 saw my G3 rebooting without apparent reason, which I finally nailed down to this weird, obscure reason – the battery was dying… So, I dragged my behind down to LG’s Singapore service center just to buy a G3 battery – apparently, LG Singapore does not think their phones will be bought by anyone which is also why batteries are never found in any “mobile shop” throughout Singapore. Well, that or LG thinks their batteries never die… Anyhow, the new battery miraculously “resolved” the spontaneous reboots.

i.e. LG’s hardware+software fails to “fail gracefully” when there is a drop in/insufficient current (although it boots up “just fine” a bare second later?!)…

Death of an Old Friend

Then came the final nail in the coffin for my G3… It started having BSODs… And I really mean an honest-to-god “blue screen of death”… And then, for kicks, it threw up a GSOD (“demigod” error) every now and then… I am not even sure what demigod the phone was worshipping, or why said demigod was in error…

Everything I found online pointed me to needing a replacement motherboard, which is near impossible. Singapore, being a teeny tiny country, has ~20% of its 5M residents (an uneducated guesstimate) making frequent/regular overseas work trips, but LG does not think this warrants the sale of dual-SIM phones*. And hence, there was no replacement parts for me here (i.e. D857/D858/D858HK model motherboard equivalents)…

*Obviously, there are more considerations than that, like if they wish to remain in the “goodwill” of the local telecommunication companies that would continue raping its customers with roaming charges while they still can, rather than allow them the convenience of buying a “local” SIM card when overseas.

The Temporal Blackhole

So, in mid-April, “in-between” phones, I had to rely solely on an Apple iPhone 6S forced upon me for work… As per real life, it is not always black and white – there is the usual good, bad, and the utterly stupid.

The Replacement

At this time in Singapore, the Sony Xperia Z5 Premium Dual had already launched, and the recently-launched Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge flagships were out in full (advertising) force. Likewise, the LG G5 was due to “land” the very next week; hence I held out on my purchasing decision till I was sure that I would be getting a dual-SIM phone that I could still fully use in Singapore beyond this year.

Unfortunately, both “common” flagships failed on this point… I tested all three handsets in-store with multiple SIM cards and had results as published as per the previous link.

Disappointed, I held my breath yet again when the “next better option”, the Xiaomi Mi 5, was known to be landing on local shores the week after (albeit at/with whatever “early-adopters”, “middle-man-jacked” prices). Soon thereafter, reports came in that the China version was, in fact, meeting my requirement… Hence, I plunged into the murky world of Xiaomi phones and the MIUI OS (and questionable eco-system).

Finding out that the Mi 5 does not have a microSDXC slot, I had to wait for the Mi 5 Pro (with 128GB storage) to be available before I made the order. As it were, stepping down from a 200GB Sandisk microSDHC to 128GB (not even counting OS and reserves yet) is already a painful exercise.

So, the big question: how does the Xiaomi Mi 5 Pro pan out?