Custom ROM: CM and MIUI - High Level Overview.

Hello Readers,

Cheers and best wishes for 2016 :-)

With this post you'll grasp better knowledge and understanding about CyanogenMod (CM) and MIUI
(which stands for Mi User Interface and pronounced "Me You I", a play on the common abbreviation of the words user interface as UI). 

Lets discuss first, what exactly the purpose to know about them?

There are list of custom ROM available in market as an open source. CM and MIUI are most popular which can be used on almost any phone brand and has support for custom ROMs. Both are an open source operating system for smartphones and tablet computers, based on the Android mobile platform. Developed as free and open source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code. Both can be used as firmware for smartphones and tablet computers based on the free software Android OS. It is similar to installing any OS on a PC.

If you love to play with technology and interested to buy a new Android based phone or flashing an existing phone with one of these ROMs or UIs theme, this article will help you to make decision and also to pick one among these two MIUI and CM.

Here is a short background comparison of the two:

• MIUI, developed by Xiaomi Tech whereas CM is developed by CyanogenMod Open-Source Community as free and open source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, with added original and third-party code. It is based on a rolling release development model and quite similar to stock Android.

• The source model of MIUI is an open source with closed source component  whereas CM is an open source. 

• Both ROMs have version history with the date of their launching and criticism/controversies involved time-to-time , the recent version of MIUI is MIUI v7 and CM is CM v13.  

• Interesting to know that the original MIUI ROMs were based on Android 2.2.x Froyo and CM v6 sources. Xiaomi added a number of apps to enhance the basic framework; those include Notes, Backup, Music, and Gallery. Other than supporting own brand Xiaomi also offers MIUI to be flashed on other smartphone brands such as Samsung, Sony, HTC, LG, One Plus and Nexus. On the other side, Cyanogen OS 12, a variant of CM v12 for the OnePlus One and Yu Yureka was released in April 2015. Yu Yuphoria got Cyanogen OS 12 out-of-the-box when it was launched in May 2015. Cyanogen commercially develops operating systems pre-installed on some devices (OnePlus One, YU Yureka, YU Yuphoria, Andromax Q, Lenovo ZUK Z1, Wileyfox Swift, Wileyfox Storm) based upon the CM source code.

• MIUI do have regional restriction on package manager side. It doesn't ship Google Play Services in Mainland China. Global versions of MIUI are been certified by Google. Also during the development of MIUI v4, Xiaomi started to remove Google services from their ROMs in order to build and monopolize its own environment of Xiaomi, including cloud services, paid themes and games (featuring MiCredit currency). Later, during development of MIUI v5, nearly all Google services had been removed from the Chinese versions.

On performance perspective,  

• Features supported by CM include native theming support, FLAC audio codec support, a large Access Point Name list, an OpenVPN client, an enhanced reboot menu, support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB tethering, CPU overclocking and other performance enhancements, soft buttons and other "tablet tweaks", toggles in the notification pull-down (such as wi-fi, Bluetooth and GPS), app permissions management, as well as other interface enhancements. CM does not contain spyware or bloatware. In many cases, CM may increase performance and reliability compared with official firmware releases.

• MIUI, the interface is similar to and competes with iOS's UI and Samsung's TouchWiz UI. MIUI has really taken the android community apart by the really amazing features that the ROM is providing to its end users. It features a heavily-modified user interface that does away with the Android app drawer and has drawn comparisons with Apple’s iOS.  IT features additional functionality that is not found in the stock Android applications which include toggles on the notification pull down, new music, gallery, and camera apps, and an altered phone dialer that displays matching contacts as a user enters a number. The modified operating system has been criticized to be similar to the Apple’s iOS but that does not really matter for the end users as long as they are enjoying using it. 

 

 

Source: http://en.miui.com/data/attachment/forum/201410/05/202651rxdbgqd8b8dlqza2.jpg.thumb.jpg

Experts take on as conclusion: pick MIUI for user-friendly features and intuitiveness; go for CM if you want to control every aspect or built-in features of your phone and want more controls with high stability; and go for stock Android for performance, stability and simplicity. Also you can find experienced user view over here.