Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro hands-on review

Software

As with all Redmi phones, the Redmi Note 7 Pro runs on MIUI. Our review unit is using the latest MIUI 10 on top of Android 9 Pie.

As we have mentioned in our previous Xiaomi reviews, MIUI is a major departure from stock Android. This is a complete redesign of the user interface and outside of a couple of specific menus you will never see stock Android UI elements here.

This includes a lot of custom items, such as the launcher, the notifications, the app switcher and all of the stock apps. All of these have gone through several changes over the years, with MIUI 10 easily being the best version so far.

The launcher is as we have seen before, lacking a traditional app drawer and instead of placing all the apps and widgets on the homescreen like on iOS. Xiaomi has a different launcher for the Pocophone that does have an app drawer and also some other features and while that launcher can be installed on any Xiaomi phone, for some reason Xiaomi chooses not to integrate the two.

MIUI 10 Launcher

The notifications also sport a custom design. The grid of icons is customizable but for some reason you cannot have fewer than twelve icons. The notifications themselves have seen several improvements over the years and do work more or less in line with stock Android and other Android phones.

MIUI 10 Notifications

Another thing that was improved recently was the app switcher. Instead of the horizontal card layout of previous versions, we now get a tiled view that shows four apps at the same time. This is definitely the most functional layout of any app switcher and there isn't another phone that lets you jump straight to the fourth last app that you had opened.

MIUI 10 app switcher

Also updated are the volume controls, which now features a much more attractive and easier to use interface. You can also expand it to show all the volume levels for different functions.

The Settings app has gone through some changes as well and the About phone section has now been moved to the top of the list. This is convenient if you like to constantly check for new OS updates or updates for the stock apps that come pre-installed. The rest of it, however, is more or less the same and a lot of it is still a bit convoluted and many of the things aren't placed where you'd expect to find them on any other Android phone.

MIUI 10 Settings

Xiaomi has also added dark mode in the latest version of the OS. This works system-wide across all the stock apps as well as every other part of the UI. Well, almost every app as the File Manager app and the Security app for some reason aren't affected by the dark mode.

As before, there is gesture support built-in. Xiaomi's gesture implementation is perhaps the best on Android, possibly because it's identical to iOS. You swipe up to go home, swipe up and hold for app switcher and swipe from left or right edge of the screen to go back. It works as you'd expect and the animations are done well.

MIUI 10 gestures

There are tons of other features in the OS that we don't have time to discuss today. There's also a lot of customization options built-in. It's one of the reasons why people like MIUI so much and even prefer it over stock Android.

But while there's definitely a lot to like here, it can also be quite a nuisance at times. Many of the stock apps that come with the phone will bombard you with notifications throughout the day. If you know how to block these, that's fine but a lot of people don't and it's common to see someone's phone going off and it's the Themes app telling you of a new theme. The phone is littered with such apps and even apps you don't expect to send you notifications will do so at some point or other.

There are also far too many duplicate apps on the device. In the same vein as Samsung, Xiaomi loves to have a version of its own app for every Google app, so the phone comes with two of everything. There are two browsers, two music players, two image galleries, and two app stores. The app store is particularly annoying, as it merely exists so Xiaomi can shove promotional content at you and offers nothing extra over the Play Store. As you can guess, none of these duplicate apps can be removed entirely.

MIUI 10 default apps

The other nuisance is ads. Xiaomi has gone on record saying it can afford to sell these phones at such low prices because it's found another revenue model - by pushing ads through its apps. Unfortunately, practically every app that comes built into the OS now has ads built-in. The good thing is these can be disabled but you have to do that on a per-app basis and the option to do it isn't always easily accessible.

It is possible to spend an hour or so going through every app and setting to disable all the notifications, unwanted apps, and ads. We'd also recommend switching the launcher to something more practical and sensible with a better-looking set of icons. Unfortunately, a lot of this requires knowledge that most people don't have. Most people just use their phones as they come out of the box and the out-of-the-box user experience for MIUI phones isn't great.

Unfortunately, there's no point expecting Xiaomi to fix any of this considering these annoyances are now part of the company's revenue model. However, it's good to note that this is not the case on all markets that Xiaomi phones are available on. Users in most Western countries seem to be spared the barrage of ads. For now.