Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has recently made quite a mark on the Indian market. While the manufacturer may not have humongous numbers to show right now, it has been in the news for both positive and negative reasons. This time it’s positive. The company has sent out an OTA Update fixing certain issues that had bugged customers of its currently selling Redmi 1S smartphone.
We had reported this earlier along with the fact that the Xiaomi Mi3 has been discontinued in the country. The information was posted by Hugo Barra on his Facebook page, informing Mi users about the fixes. The Redmi 1S had been affected by heating issues, along with problems with RAM availability and UI performance. The MiUI, being RAM heavy, wasn’t best suited for a 1 GB device, but Barra said that the new update fixes it. In addition, Barra has also clarified some issues with the processor version seen on third party apps like CPU-Z etc.
Here is what Barra posted.
“A quick update to India Mi fans using the Redmi 1S:
1) OTA UPDATE: Today we released an over-the-air system update (v45) for the Redmi 1S. This release incorporates feedback received from a large number of users and addresses a few important issues:
Issue #1: Heating & battery life
Many users in India tell us that their Redmi 1S gets very hot (sometimes above 45C), particularly in warmer areas of the country. We’ve improved our thermal control algorithm to better regulate temperature and keep it under 38C in normal usage conditions. In our internal tests as well as with our feedback group, we’ve found that these changes significantly reduce the device’s overall temperature while also improving battery life. We’re going to continue to optimize temperature control in future builds so please keep sending us your feedback.
Issue #2: RAM availability
Some users in India have pointed out that background apps are sometimes getting killed more aggressively than they would expect (for example, music player stopping while user is playing a 3D game). We have looked at this closely and made a few significant improvements in how MIUI manages RAM on a 1GB device, which has resulted in noticeable improvements.
Issue #3: UI performance
We also received some feedback from users whose devices were suffering from performance issues such as frame rate drops and UI lag. These issues were particularly prevalent during computationally intensive tasks like gaming. The majority of these problems were a result of CPU throttling due to overheating and lack of RAM availability, which the fixes above have addressed. We will continue to monitor user feedback in this particular area.
2) DEVICE SPECS: Many users had concerns that the Redmi 1S device specifications for the processor and battery were not correctly represented on Flipkart, Mi.com and the device itself. We wanted to clarify.
Processor specs
The Redmi 1S comes with a 1.6 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 MSM8228 as correctly noted on Mi.com and Flipkart but some 3rd party apps report a MSM8226. Typically, these apps get their information from the build.prop file inherited from the chipset driver, which represents itself as MSM8226 in both processors (MSM8228 is based on the original hardware and driver of the MSM8226). This is the reason why you see MSM8226 in apps such as CPU-Z even though the actual processor is indeed a MSM8228. This situation is also seen in other devices with the same chipset, such as the Xolo Q1100.
Battery
The Redmi 1S has a Lithium-ion Polymer (sometimes shortened to lithium polymer or li-poly) battery. While the spec on the battery label is correct, our product page on Mi.com incorrectly listed “Li-ion.” We have updated the website to reflect the correct battery specifications. Additionally, some 3rd party apps incorrectly reported a “Li-ion” battery, which was the result of a similar issue to the processor mismatch described above. In this case, we were able to find a simple fix and will be rolling that out in the next OTA.”
Xiaomi is currently preparing to bring the Redmi Note smartphone to the Indian market, while the company will also bring the Xiaomi Mi4 as its flagship in the country by the end of the year or early next year.