Xiaomi phones

Raised as a usability problem by 16 people on Hacker News over 9 years (2017–2025), in 13 threads.

People raised many different problems with Xiaomi phones, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 17 complaints

Phones become sluggish, forcing replacement every year or two2025-07-28
Video mode takes 10-30 seconds to start, sometimes hangs and never starts2024-07-11
Must deny stacked permission prompts and disable ads in every app2023-05-21
Default app choices get reset with every system update2023-05-21
Built-in apps cannot be uninstalled, so unwanted apps stay on the phone2023-03-16
Apps get killed so fast that logging in and opening in-app browsers fails2022-02-21
Stock apps and ads can't be disabled, and the system UI uses dark patterns2022-01-01
Stock UI is hard to use and custom ROM installation is finicky, causing bricked devices2022-01-01
Default music playback forces a cloud sign-up before playing files already on the phone2021-09-06
Replaces user's preferred apps with its own and texts arrive late or not at all2021-04-05
Enabling USB debugging forces a Xiaomi account signup, a tactic to push account creation2021-03-01
Modal consent popups interrupt the user's flow and push them into deciding immediately2021-03-01
Requires a Mi Account just to enable USB debugging2019-05-16
Enabling USB debugging for app testing requires a Mi Account2019-05-16
Apps like Audible widget need obscure battery settings changed to work2019-01-14
Notifications rarely arrive by default because apps are killed and must be enabled individually2017-07-21
Ads cannot be turned off in the phone's software2017-01-15