New Version Update

odedshankar

Is anyone from UMI Engineering team is reading this forum?
A new version is a must with all the bug fixes that people found with the UMI Z first release, when should we expect one?
Obviously all the first buyers of the phone are your Alpha/Beta testers insteads of you testing it properly before the version release.

Please advise when should we expect a ROM update?

zeljko

zeljko replied at 2017-2-13 05:51
The software is very badly programmed by UMI Z.

When changes umi in the problems with the fingerprint display reaction time camera autofocus battery very fast empty gps is too slow .

Tux

Using the first buyers of a new product as beta testers is a business practice pioneered by the USA a long time ago. Companies that did this easily beat their European counterparts who spent additional months testing all the bugs out of their products only to find that the customers had already bought the bug filled American product because it was first to market.

It's probably worth considering just how much of the UMI Z _does_ work correctly. I suspect that the UMI engineering team actually fixed a lot of bugs before the initial release, but the release date was set while the phone was still in development, which leaves the engineering team in a tricky position

We're doing exactly what UMI needs us to do, but finding and documenting UMI Z bugs in this forum, and the engineers are probably fixing those bugs as we raise them. However fixing software bugs is the easy part, while making a new software release also requires checking that all the bug fixes haven't broken anything else, and that the software upgrade doesn't brick any phones running previous buggy versions. An engineer who is preparing a ROM upgrade isn't fixing any bugs, so rolling out very frequent upgrades quickly becomes counter productive.

That said, I don't like waiting a long time for bug fixes either, and looking at the ROM part of the forum suggests that UMI tends to roll out software upgrades for new products fairly frequently. The upgrade to Android 7 will probably present an interesting challenge to the software engineers who are still trying to make regular bug fix releases on Android 6 though.

Daphone

I think UMI could wait a little longer before release, i dont mind being a early adopter i have been doing so with computer hardware for a long time.

But i think maybe the phones could be a little less rough around the edges before public release.

That being said i got my Z phone yesterday and aside for two small issues i managed to solve myself it have been working just fine, but i must also say i am not a hardcore phone user, actually i could make do with a good dual-core phone i think.

I have a feeling UMI are focusing on the android 7 and getting that out there ASAP as thats what most people would be wanting, and also what you will be expecting on a phone this caliber ( hardware )

Daphone

Okay 1 thing i just saw, the phone was charged 100% when i went to bed yesterday, and now 12 hours later the battery is already on 85%

That seem a little much considering the phone have done nothing but receive a text while i was sleeping, otherwise its just been sitting there with display off.

Maybe too many cores are running in sleep mode ??? dunno just a wild guess.

odedshankar

I agree that using the first release is a known method, but still it is not justified with basic functions that a simple testing will find easily.
I used to be an embedded software engineer and worked in R&D for a long time. Was working in a small start up 15 years ago with minimum resources but before any release, our product use to go through a alpha and beta testing, even short ones but still some major issues were raised before the product got to the customers. I used to be responsible for the regression testing, defining and executing a set of pre-defined tests to make sure that the new bug fixes didn't create new bugs. Well saying that, it is the choice of the brand how they want to go, as another Chinese brand that sells low quality products or as a leader in its field like Xiaomi and Meizu - these company added the QA as part of the process and it feels like that.

Tux

No disrespect intended :-)
As you say, regression testing is vital, automated regression testing for continuous integration is even better.
It will be interesting to see how quickly things stabilise over the next few releases.

zeljko

\n\n programmed by UMI Z.

odedshankar

no worries Tux, didn't think for a second that you disrespected :-) I am just quite disturb by this approach to do lots of advertisement to sell a so called flagship, but still not bothering with the most basic thing of testing a product properly.
I think that the hardware of the Z is good enough for the price, but software is 50% of the product, if you don't optimise the hardware properly what's the purpose. As you mentioned automated regression and standard tests set for every release are a must for any embedded devices.
Like the Gyroscope wrong parameters sent to the driver - something like that should not happen on a formal release for example.
It is wrong approach to be first to market with a unstable product as for the long run it will hurt the brand and people will see it as a low quality one. The american car industry crushed on the 70's as a result of bad QA and never recovered since, while the Japanese took over the market mainly by applying a proper QA procedure and providing tested quality products.
Just my 2 cents :-)

kirikou

https://forum.xda-developers.com ... ugat-umi-z-t3554009