Speed difference between MIUI and stock ICS on Nexus S

[tobice]

I'm thinking about trying MIUI. I have already had MIUI on my Nexus S some time ago but it was the Gingerbread version. And as far as I remember it was slightly slower, mainly the memory consumption was worse than in stock GB. Right now I'm running stock ICS and although I really like it and I wouldn't go back to Gingerbread, it still is not as fast as it was, at least in my experience. So my question is: how fast is MIUI ICS on Nexus S during daily use? Is it better/worse than stock ICS? Does it "feel" fast? How is the memory usage?

 

[iBotPeaches]

Nandroid your current ROM. Flash MIUI and give it a shot.

Were a MIUI forum, were gonna be a bit biased. Try it out for yourself. Make sure to backup, complete wipe, then flash.

 

[tobice]

I'm most probably going to give it a shot... but I was just curious what should I expect. And maybe biased is what I want I watched and read some latest MIUI ICS reviews for Nexus S and most of them used expressions like "blazeingly fast" etc, but in my opinion the reality is often different once all essential and favorite apps are installed... so I wanted to know a real experience from someone who uses MIUI on a daily basis.

 

[iBotPeaches]

I use it on my NS daily. The phone is fine. Battery life is perfect, unless I leave GPS on or some game running.

GPS works fine, music quality is good, SMS and MMS work for me (others maybe not), so all the main features work for me daily and thats really all I use.

 

[tobice]

Ok, so I tried MIUI and this is what I noticed (might be helpful for someone):

Generally the system is at least equally fast as stock ICS in my opinion... starting apps, switching between apps, movement through the system, memory usage, that's all pretty much the same. In some cases MIUI was even much faster, for example music player and controlling music was definitely more responsive than in stock ICS. So I was positively surprised.

The problem was with the UI smoothness. I'm spoiled with ICS and its buttery smooth 60fps animations and transitions so when I tried MIUI I was kind of disappointed. Yes, the system was 100% usable, but the "feeling of using" was definitely worse than in stock ICS - the desktop transitions, opening folders, lockscreen (especially when playing music) - that all seemed a little bit unoptimized to me... I don't know, are there any hacks to improve that?

Anyway, for now I'll keep stock ICS, I'm happy with it (unlike with pure Gingerbread). I'll try probably MIUI again in few months to see what has changed.

 

[iBotPeaches]

There is a setting

Settings -> Developer -> Force GPU Rendering

That will use your GPU instead of CPU for rendering and should aid in the speed a ton. Let me know if that works, because both my MIUI builds are very fast and sense no lag.

 

[tobice]

There is a setting

Settings -> Developer -> Force GPU Rendering

That will use your GPU instead of CPU for rendering and should aid in the speed a ton. Let me know if that works, because both my MIUI builds are very fast and sense no lag.

I already rolled back to stock ICS But thanks for the tip, wish I knew it before... but when I have time again I will definitely try it.