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So, as many of you probably already know, Xiaomi has held a press conference in China on August 13th. China’s number one smartphone manufacturer has actually announced both hardware and software at the event, including the Redmi Note 2 / Prime smartphone, and the Android-based MIUI 7 OS. I really didn’t know what to expect out of MIUI 7 before Xiaomi unveiled it, and I have to say, I was somewhat disappointed by what I’ve seen. Don’t get me wrong though, MIUI 7 is more than a solid OS, and a decent upgrade to MIUI 6, but… ah, let me explain.
Xiaomi is a very interesting company, they were founded in 2010, and in 2014 they managed to become the number one smartphone OEM in China. That being said, people started calling Xiaomi the ‘Apple of China’. This Chinese company actually had to deal with that naming for quite some time, they still do actually. A number of Xiaomi-branded products were inspired by Apple’s design language, and even their Android-based OS looks very similar to iOS, no point in denying it. If you compare the two UI’s, you’ll notice quite a few similarities as far as the design goes, not to mention that MIUI doesn’t exactly have a separate app drawer. MIUI’s applications are listed in the home screen, which actually serves as an app drawer… no need in mentioning that this is exactly how iOS functions.
And once again, don’t get me wrong, Xiaomi does differentiate from Apple in a ton of ways, but there are still some similarities that should not be there, at least in my humble opinion. Reading the comments online / checking people’s reactions, I have to say that I’m not the only one. Many Xiaomi consumers were expecting the company to significantly alter the design of MIUI in its later iteration (version 7) which was announced recently, but that didn’t really happen. MIUI 7 is an improvement in many ways, Xiaomi did introduce new features and improved overall stability and fluidity of the OS quite a lot, but they could have been more extreme in their approach here.
Some of you probably don’t agree with what I’ve said here, and that’s just fine. Xiaomi is an extremely successful company, and one of the fastest growing OEMs in the world. There are obviously millions of users who love their products through and through, including MIUI. Xiaomi has opted to stick with their current software philosophy, and who knows, perhaps that’s a good thing. You never know how people would react if things were different. It will be interesting to see what will the company do next time around though.