Today, when buying a Xiaomi, we no longer have to worry about system problems at all. We take the phone out of the box, turn it on and we can start using it. It wasn’t always this way though. before this manufacturer settled in our country, we had to download MIUI Polska with each new device. It was not a very complicated process, but more for enthusiasts and it required some practice to do everything correctly. Why did we have to play with the new device from the start? Of course, you’ll find out later in the material, but now we just have global software, which may work differently, but it’s totally usable!
MIUI Poland – table of contents
I don’t want you to misunderstand me. When Xiaomi entered our home market, smartphones immediately installed global software. MIUI Polska was and still is a project aimed primarily at phones imported from abroad (mainly from China). Therefore, problems with these devices may not have affected you at all. Therefore, it is even more worth bringing this story closer – in particular, that Xiaomi was relatively popular in our country even before they officially sold their first product here.
Xiaomi in Poland … before the start of official distribution
There’s no doubt that Xiaomi in Poland had a rather turbulent start. On the one hand, the equipment of this brand was already owned by many native users, and word of mouth marketing was developing on a large scale at that time. This was all due to the excellent value for money and many people, including myself of course, decided to import their device from a Chinese website dealing with the sale of electronics. On the other hand, we must even mention the rather “inept” conquest of a new market. Initially, the distributor of devices from this manufacturer was ABC Data, and apparently everything seems fine, but in practice, unfortunately, it was not so beautiful …
It was found that the products sold officially were no longer valued as well by the taxes, and moreover, ABC Data (indirectly) did not completely face the problems of software and service. For this reason, downloading phones from China was still a fairly common practice, and the competition between the official sales channel and overseas portals was getting stronger every month. At one point, the iBuyGou portal addressed the concerns of native potential customers about warranty issues and agreed with the MiCenter service (very closely related to the MIUI Poland project). It was no different in the context of complaints and returns. Foreign distribution channels began to offer additional services at a decent level and definitely undermined the position of the official distributor.
The actions taken through unofficial sales channels clearly show how huge a phenomenon Xiaomi was in our country and how many people got used to downloading these devices from China. At one point there was even a “battle” against ABC Data among fans of this brand, and if you think about it, there was nothing strange about it. The Mi 5 model in the official distribution cost 1799 PLN, so it was still cheap compared to the competition, but I bought it in China with discount codes for just over 1200 PLN. That’s a huge difference and many people preferred to spend their time tweaking the software to save a few hundred. It should be emphasized once again that this is not mainly the fault of ABC Data, but of additional taxes in Poland.
MIUI Polska – a project that allowed Xiaomi to achieve such spectacular success in our country
Now that I’ve told you a bit about the story, it’s time to get down to business! What is MIUI Poland anyway? It is a system, or rather a custom rom, which, based on the Chinese version of MIUI, has been fully translated into our and 26 other languages. The software is fully comprehensive and contains a number of fixes and additional functions even compared to the overall system. Today, moreover, it has many improvements and is constantly released for new devices and systematically updated.
There really are a lot of differences, but let me just mention the most important ones. If you are curious, on the official website of the project you can find a table that details all the changes from the overall software. For me, the most important differences are undoubtedly the replacement of the Dialer and SMS applications by Xiaomi variants and the definitely extended possibility of customizing the system. Thanks to MIUI Polska you can, for example, further customize the status bar or the multitasking menu, add additional shortcuts or even record phone calls.
However, the differences visible at first glance are not the most significant. Many people to this day decide to install this software because of the changes that are happening “under the hood”. It has repeatedly turned out that the smartphone in this system has a much lower appetite for energy and works much faster. Besides, MIUI has also been cleaned from all unwanted apps and advertisements pre-installed in system apps.
As you can see there are a lot of positive changes and even the global version is theoretically unable to compete with MIUI Polska / Xiaomi.eu. To date, a very high level of released software is maintained and it appears on the latest devices. Finally, don’t forget about updates. I am still waiting for the MIUI 14 global on my device myself. After installing MIUI Polska, however, I wouldn’t have this problem, since the 14 has been available for a long time and has even had two updates. Finally, it should be mentioned that in the past there was a problem with payments via Google Pay. This was due to root permissions, and Magisk at one point didn’t allow this to be hidden from the system. Now the problem no longer exists.
MIUI Polska is a sensational system, but now hardly anyone will be convinced!
There is nothing to cheat – Xiaomi has completely changed and is no longer the same company as before. This manufacturer is no longer an “exotic” brand, and global software has become so acceptable and polished that most people don’t need to mess around. I gave up on installing MIUI Polska / Xiaomi.eu myself on the Mi Mix 2S model, which is more than 5 years old and I must admit that I simply do not want to. As I mentioned earlier – installing this software is not that easyalthough many “specialists” remembering the old days and Xiaomi devices imported from China will tell you something completely different.
Xiaomi itself (with help from Google) has stopped facilitating this process. Once upon a time, unlocking the bootloader was a relatively easy, quick, and enjoyable process, but today it has changed drastically. Now we can wait up to 360 hours for such an opportunity. Also, it would be nice to get TWRP, and in the event of phone damage and warranty return, we have to cross our fingers that the service techs recognize that they’re not seeing the custom software installed. So it’s hard not to agree that there are a lot of problems with this and that there are fewer and fewer people willing to play such games.
Custom roms are dying – that’s a fact and sadly that also applies to such sensational software as MIUI Poland. Right now the truth is that we just want to unbox the phone and start using it. Have times changed? In part certainly, but mostly, the world seems to speed up every year, and we probably don’t have time to have so much fun anymore. Despite everything, I keep my fingers crossed for MIUI Polska and I hope that this great project, which refines the Xiaomi system almost to perfection, will last as long as possible.
opening photo: Depositphotos/ChinaImages
