[Xiaomi Mi 5s Questions & Answers] NexusPenguin:
Hi there,

As a proud owner of a Xiaomi mi5s Plus and a compulsive flasher of custom ROM's, I had to get rid of that addiction to flashing when I get the mi5s Plus. Not that I wanted to get rid of it, but simply put, there was no way to get satisfaction by that addiction because of the lack of material to flash.

OK... So I thought to myself : "Am I really to live with MIUI 8.0.X.0 for ever ?", which in other words, means to live with the ROM that is probably the most far away from AOSP ROM ?

Answer was, unfortunately, undoubtedly : "Yes".

So it was time for me to make a hard introspection work... and answer that most philosophical question : "WHY do I want custom ROM ?".

Basically for 2 reasons :

- 1°) because I want something close to AOSP ;

- 2°) because I want to get the ability to customize things the way I want and not be in constant constraint like iPhone users are.

And now to the point : can I get those 2 things and still use MIUI 8.0 ?

At first I thought : "Hell no. This is too close to iPhone. In fact, should you just look the screen, you think you have an iPhone".

So I decided to change things interface wise...

First reflex was to get some themes from the in-built Xiaomi Store. What a disappointment ! About 90% of those themes are called something that contains "iOS". This is EXACTLY what I want to avoid !

So how to get rid of that apparent MIUI ? The answer is pretty simple : CHANGE THE LAUNCHER ! So I installed my favourite launcher : Smart Launcher from the former "Gin Lemon" (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ginlemon.flowerfree).

What do I get now ? Simple : I don't even notice that I am running MIUI anymore. Well, that is not exactly true. I still notice when I go to the "Settings". But that part is probably the only one that is still somewhat close to AOSP. So I can live with it despite so "rearrangements"... Indeed, once configured, I don't go to settings that often... So not a problem.

So I had to face the second reason for me to flash a custom ROM : customizations !

The most important thing to me is to be able to have shortcuts to actions and/or apps almost everywhere. I just hate to have to dig into menus, searches and stuff to be able to achieve what I am looking for. So of course, having an ROM that allows me to customize the interface is a great move. I can already have a bunch of shortcuts in Smartlauncher... but the best thing I can do is have a shortcut assigned to the hardware buttons... and there are 7 of them in the mi5s Plus (navigation : 3 ; volume : 2 ; power : 1 ; FP Scanner : 1).

So how to I do this ? I did some research but it rapidly became obvious that I will need to unlock the phone to root it and so be able to install XPosed framework and some XPosed modules. So I did. Applied to get the unlock code ; got it after 3 days. Unlocked the device, installed TWRP, installed SuperSU and installed XPosed framework.

So I of course installed the ultimate swiss army knife of UI customization : GravityBox. Unfortunately, it was of little help. It only really works when you have a "close to AOSP" ROM. But as mentioned earlier : MIUI is the farest thing to AOSP you can imagine. So a lot of tweaks had no effects. Still the major one is still present : the "App launcher". Hit a button, it will display a "pop-up" where you can add up to 12 shortcuts to apps. So I configured the "Home Butoon" to display it with a long press... I then wanted to configure the other buttons, but some can't be configured (Volume and Power), others don't take the mod ("Recents" button from the navigation buttons) and one breaks things (FP scanner => device doesn't wake AND unlock if used).

So I digged a little deeper and found another module called "XPosed Additions" : that one allows me to configure each button (yes, all seven buttons !) and I am able to assign up to 6 actions and/or shortcuts to each one of them ! And YES : that does include the FP scanner ! Imagine : for the FP Scanner :

- display off => power on & unlock ;

- display on + 1 tap => got to "Home"

- display on + long press => show the dialer (remember, even if "Smart" it's basically a "Phone" !) ;

- display on + double tap => display off

- display on + double tap and hold => bring up the camera ;

- display on + triple tap => bring up Waze ;

- display on + triple tap and hold => bring up the Radar app.

That was it on the buttons customization side. Now there was still one thing I couldn't stand in MIUI : that was the QuickSettings. I din't liked two things : "Aqua on white" for one ; not able to hide buttons I do no use for two.

For the first thing (appearance) the "Theme Store" is a nice help. Even if the theme is labelled "iOS", you won't noticed the Apple-ish look once the Launcher is installed. But you will still keep the appearance of the Quicksettings. So I applied a theme that had an appearance I found appealing.

For the second thing, another Xposed module helped : it's called "MIUI Tweaks". I gives the ability to hide the unused QuickSettings (and sideways to tweak a little the appearance : size and stuff, but notthe colour... which leaves the Them handy !).

CONCLUSION :

Even if I am, as mentioned in the brief introduction, a compulsive custom ROM flasher, I now live with MIUI 8.0 and I must say that I don't mind doing so ! At least I have everything working (camera, gallery, network, 4G...) and I also have a really nice battery life (I have used it for 48 hours and I still have 28% even though the Play Store updates automatically and I had several rather long phone calls and played "Darkness Reborn" for about 3h and played around with settings to fine tune my set-up... which gives a SOT of about 4h45minutes).

I am now waiting for Xiaomi to release a Nougat based ROM to maybe improve battery life even more...

But to tell the truth, even without a custom ROM, I am perfectly happy with this device... of course I had to spend about 5 dollars to unlock Xposed additions and MIUI tweaks (2.5 dollars each). But those were the most well-spent 5 dollars in the last 5 years ! And I will still be able to use those even if I change the phone... which I don't think will happen too soon !