WAG THE DOG
Most smartphone brands have followed the herd mentality when it comes to creating USPs for their devices. Priorities change every year and what follows is a barrage of devices with ridiculously similar specs at very confusing pricepoints. And then there are a few brands focused on mixing and matching specs, and providing combos of looks and performance at affordable price points. The Redmi range from Xiaomi belongs to this latter category. After addressing the Indian entrylevel smartphone scene with the Note 4 and 4A, the company has just launched the Y-series smartphones, meant for enhanced camera performance. The Redmi Y1 is the first phone to use a technique called pixel binning to ensure that image pixels are packed closer to each other, resulting in clearer and sharper images. Along with this, a whole new LED W ith over 1 billion Indians having an Aadhaar ID, online service providers are finding new and creative ways to leverage this authentication tool. The latest is the matrimonial platform LoveVivah.com. It uses Aadhaar to verify in real time, the details of profiles posted and assure searchers for soul mates that they are not dealing with fictitious or fraudulent identities. The app available for Android and iOS. It shortlists and sends selected profiles to other Aadhaar-verified genuine users only. Beyond the back-end check through Aadhaar, LoveVivah also performs a fivestep verification through Facebook, LinkedIn, email and mobile.
It might seem like the tail is wagging the dog — Xiaomi is one of those who believe the basic stock Android is merely a canvas on which they can paint their own User Interface enhancements. They update the UI, with some useful enhancements, every few years, especially for Indian users and have just launched MIUI 9. Besides updates to existing features like Dual Apps (the ability to run two accounts of the same app on the same screen), Second Space (partitioning your phone memory) and scrolling screenshots (the ability to take screen shots beyond an entire screen of the device), the UI has gone back to basics. Any MIUI device will now respond faster to touch, will optimise the CPU performance by creating a priority matrix for apps running in the background and optimises data transfer within the device. Additionally, the screen icons will now be animated, and the notifications on the home screen will be more intuitive, allowing you to respond to WhatsApp messages without going into the app. I also like the ability to split the screen between two apps.
Another enhancement is an ‘erase’ tool that allows you to pull up any image in your gallery and erase any distracting elements in the picture. Finally, your railway ticket SMS will no longer look like a string of gibberish. If your device runs on MIUI 9, any IRCTC ticket will look like a ‘card’ with all the important information displayed neatly. Some 25 new Indian holidays have been added to the Mi Calendar, and an additional calendar has been added. MIUI 9 has started progressively rolling out to all Xiaomi devices, including the Y1, this month.
Customised UIs like these are a matter of taste — some love them. Others prefer the stark simplicity of the stock Android. We’re guessing you will retain most of the Xiaomi UIs.