MIUI vs. CyanogenMod Part 1: Introduction to a long series of posts.

Before I begin, this post is based off of the latest English build of MIUI [3/5/11] and CM7.

I'm also not going into specifics in this post. Just giving you all a brief overview. Enjoy.

Good-quality Android ROMs are hard to come by these days. They really are, especially if your phone is lucky enough to have creative developers that push out updates on a regular basis. However, having a lot of developers working on your phone and its associated software has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the software that's available to download. Oftentimes, multiple developers will base their roms off the same system dumps, modify a few things, insert a new kernel, etc, and call the rom their own without really bringing anything new to the table.

Now, this doesn't mean that I don't like a good stock Sense build from time to time. I just like having software that breaks away from the norm, bringing new features and more support to the table every month.

And the two software roms I'm going to talk about today [and in some more posts after this one] are MIUI and CyanogenMod 7.

I find myself having an internal conflict every time I flash a new rom to my phone. I can't decide whether to go back to something that's guaranteed to work [MIUI/CM7] or something that's new/improved/different. And oftentimes, I choose the option involving the reliable software [MIUI/CM7], because I know that when I flash it nothing will go wrong, and I can have my phone run for a full day without having to turn off my phone during a movie to conserve 2 hours of battery life.

Yet another dilemma arises--which should I choose? One is visually impressive, holding iPhone-like qualities as well as multiple features no other rom has. The other is open-sourced to the max, offering total reliability, minimal visual effects [which means less battery drain] and other little tweaks that only a true tweaker/hacker/anyone with moderate-tech-intelligence can access and modify.

Hopefully, the series of posts following this one help you understand the nuances and the little quirks of both of the software, so you will have a better understanding of the differences between the two.

Good night for now.

Ωπ