I totally agree. I haven't received mine yet.

03/09/2014 11:46:30 Out for Delivery From Pasir Gudang Branch
04/09/2014 11:19:12 Out for Delivery From Pasir Gudang Branch
03/09/2014 00:00 Unable To Complete Delivery
04/09/2014 00:00 Unable To Complete Delivery

What the hell? They can't finish their tour, so they just give up and go home?! Why leave so late?

How about Lazada's promise of sending it out within 72 hours (workdays), it's clearly been more than that by now. I need to have the phone before Sunday, and in Johor Friday and Saturday officially are weekend. Doesn't Lazada owe me a voucher now?

Yeah, but no phone... leaving Malaysia on Sunday. Bloody GDEX... It took Xiaomi less time to deliver from China... TWICE!

Really? Thought their promise was to have it delivered within 72 hours (at least first try, if you're not home that doesn't count, otherwise people will hide at home )

Just checked, I took a photo: They wrote deliver within 72 hours (KL area 48).

This post has been edited by kadajawi: Sep 4 2014, 08:46 PM

Haha, but I think Xiaomi doesn't have much to do with that... they gave them a few thousand units, and the rest is between customers and Lazada. And GDEX...

I've already contacted Lazada through FB, lets see...

Lazada already, for a short while, dropped the price to RM 377. They have too much stock of the 1S. Lazada still has stock, thus Xiaomi probably too. They have produced too many I guess, there's simply not so much demand (people just want the Note or Mi3, and even Mi3 demand seems to have slowed down, judging by how much time you have to order one).

Typically the high, mid and low settings are saying how much the photos are compressed. It can still be that the photos are 8 MP, regardless of settings, but there will be compression artefacts and lost details at the medium and low settings. When you zoom in things will look really ugly.

Lately there was no adrenaline rush because they had enough stocks for hours

Lazada has replied that they are forwarding my case to the responsible department, and GDEx is trying it yet again... I think if they give it up again I will have to drive there...

GDex... FedEx have been great both times I ordered something through them.

I'd be happy if the Mi3 were a bit smaller... 4.7" is perfect to me.

This post has been edited by kadajawi: Sep 5 2014, 02:01 PM

Since I just received the 1S I could test the camera. It will always take 8 MP photos, no matter if low, standard or high is set. It is just how much it compresses the photo that is different.

The GDex boy btw. forgot the phone on his motorbike... had to go down again to fetch it. He was friendly though. I really wonder why it took them so many attempts to deliver it though, because it's not like he could have delivered a lot of packages on his bike.

I disagree. People usually seem to like big things... especially when it comes to phones.

As for MP etc... I'm afraid you're wrong. The sensor size and the sensor design determines how much light goes in. Some sensors need to have quite some space between each pixel, some get them more closely together. Every pixel is able to collect a certain amount of light. How big the pixels are thus depends on the number of pixels (the more pixels, the smaller they have to be for a given sensor size), how big the sensor is (in a phone it's usually somewhere between 1/6" and 1/2.3", the high end Nokia camera phones go up to 1/1.5" or even 4/3" I believe... not sure now. DSLRs are much, much bigger than that) and how the sensor design is (backlit sensors are better, because the electronics are on the other side, older sensors had all the electronics at the side where light hits the sensor, thus losing a lot of space). The bigger the pixels are, the better will the phone perform in low light situations. That is why Sony's A7S is basically a night vision goggle, it sees more light than your eyes do! Huge sensor, only 12 MP, and a modern sensor design. It is amazing.

Unfortunately in camera modules for phones, lower resolution sensors are usually smaller too (case in point 8 MP Sony sensors tend to have around 1/4", 13 MP Sony sensors around 1/3" and 20 MP Sony sensors should be around 1/2.3" I'd guess. In the end, pixel size stays more or less the same... a 6 MP 1/2.3" sensor would be pretty good in the dark). The HTC One is an exception there. Btw., the bigger the sensor, the bigger the lens has to be too, leading to bulky camera modules. We could have so much better cameras if we were willing to sacrifice slimness. Then finally there's the thing about aperture... the wider open it gets, the more shallow depth of field we get, and the more light is collected for the sensor. (f2.0 is better than f2.8). Means bigger lenses though.

The part of compression is right though. Low quality = high compression = when you zoom in it's a blurry mess with artefacts, where the same photo at high would be sharp and clean.

Back to the test I've done earlier: Same photo, more or less, at low 580 kB, standard is 1.05 MB and high is 2.66 MB.

This post has been edited by kadajawi: Sep 5 2014, 04:11 PM

Erm, I'm afraid no. You get the same amount of pixels, it just may lack some details, look smudged etc.. But the resolution stays the same. If you save a photo at half the resolution, but so that it reaches the same file size, the result will look different. Especially when you zoom in to 100% on the full resolution low quality photo, and zoom in to the same point (200% I guess?) on the half resolution (2 instead of 8 MP I think) high quality photo. Huge difference.

I thought that /k/ thread was deleted?

This post has been edited by kadajawi: Sep 5 2014, 05:04 PM

Erm. If you want to do a backup, doesn't MIUI offer to do a backup before upgrading? Also you can ask it to manually do one...

Those things aren't really related. There are several ways to increase low light performance.

a) Bigger pixels. Bigger sensor, lower resolution, newer tech that uses more of the available space for light gathering rather than for example transferring the pixels to the imaging processor. The light sensitivity is measured in ISO. The higher the value, the more sensitive it is, however depending on the sensor it can be extremely noisy. A compact camera may go to ISO 3200 or 6400 (but it's unusable). The steps are for example 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, ... each step means 2x the light sensitivity. A decent DSLR will go to ISO 51200 perhaps, the current low light champion Sony A7S does something like 409600 or so. Those maximum values are usually barely usable.

b) Faster lens (wider open aperture). f1.8 beats f2.0 beats f2.2, ... to be honest the difference between f2.0 and f2.2 is not big, the steps are 1 → 1,4 → 2 → 2,8 → 4 → 5,6 → 8 → 11 → 16 → 22. Each step represents 1/2 as much light hitting the sensor. For ISO it is 2x the ISO = 2x the sensitivity. i.e. ISO 200 with f2 = ISO 400 with f2.8. Both will result in a photo of the same brightness, however the higher the ISO the more noise there is in the photo. The Mi3 goes to ISO 3200, but at those values it's a mess.

c) Longer exposure. However you can't hold the camera steady for long, especially if it is something like a phone, which is very light and is only held by your hands (a DSLR touches your face, which stabilizes it a lot, and it has a lot more weight). A solution that works to a certain degree is an optical image stabilizer, which will try to balance out your shaking. Again, 2x the exposure time = 2x as much light being collected. The rule of thumb is 1/focal length (converted to 35mm equivalent). So with a standard wide angle lens of 28mm you should be able to hold 1/30th, if it is longer than that, you need a stabilizer. However with smartphones that is IMHO pretty hard to hold already.

So that means: 1/50th at f2 at ISO 100 = 1/25th at f2.8 at ISO 100 or 1/50th at f2.8 at ISO 200. They will all result in the same exposure, though the last case will be noisier, while the second one may be shaken. The first one will be optimal in the case of a smartphone, because everything is in focus anyway thanks to the small sensor.

Going back to the initial question: if 1/2 means the size of the sensor, i.e. 1/2", that's an advantage over a 1/2.6" sensor, though it also depends on the MP. (Also, if you reduce the resolution you can get rid of some noise, i.e. a 10 MP photo with a 1/2.3" sensor downscaled to 5 MP should be similar-ish to a photo taken with a 5 MP 1/2.3" sensor, all other things being equal (I'd say the photo with the 5 MP sensor is probably better, but not by as much as it used to)). Then f2 beats f2.2, too.

Lens flare is normal, it depends on the lens, and you can't expect a smartphone to have a great lens. That would make it even more expensive and bulkier. Maybe it's just too dirty, otherwise you can try to use your hand to cover up the light source that is creating the lens flare... it should be just outside of the photo.

I have done some testing (non scientific), and so far I like the 1S camera much more than the Mi3 camera, especially when it comes to video. It's much better.

I think it has better low light capabilities, at least for video. Also the Mi3 seems to muddle things up faster.

On the other hand the Mi3 does let you take raw stills. They do require a lot of postprocessing, but you can end up with really nice results. Nice and very sharp.

Guys, I need to make a quick decision. Is the 1S ok if you use it lightly, but running Skype, Viber and Whatsapp in the background? Or is the RAM not enough for that...?

I'm asking cause I use these apps in the background on my Mi3, and RAM is never enough. Playback a podcast, switch to Chrome... podcast crashes. MIUI seems terribly wasteful with resources...

This post has been edited by kadajawi: Nov 16 2014, 12:28 AM

It's not for me, it's for my mum. She needs a phone that works well out of the box, and Viber, Whatsapp and Skype need to run in the background without crashing. If that plus some mild usage works, ok. The phone really won't be used heavily, BUT these apps need to run in the background without crashing. People need to be able to contact her in those apps without a problem. I guess if I install Mokee or CM11 it will work, but I'm not there, and talking her through the process on Skype...

Mi Note perhaps... I wonder if there'll be discounts when the 4G is launched...