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Xiaomi is slowly phasing out its Mi branding
Xiaomi will phase out its “Mi” branding over the coming months, with new products slated to carry the Xiaomi name instead.
Xiaomi targets Europe with two cheap Android One phones
Remember Android One? Google launched the program in 2014 as a way to improve cheap, low-end Android phones. These days, though, that responsibility has passed to Android Go -- a new version of the operating system optimized for lower-performing hardware. Android One, meanwhile, has morphed into a 'pure Android' stamp of approval (similar to the old Google Play Edition branding) with timely software and security updates. Today, Xiaomi is announcing two new smartphones -- the Mi A2 and Mi A2 Lite -- which run this near-stock version of Android. More importantly, both devices are coming to 40 markets, including Spain. Update: The Mi A2 will be available in the following European markets: Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine. It's also coming to Colombia and Mexico (no word on North America) and a variety of markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, including Egypt, India, Hong Kong, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, and the UAE.
Xiaomi's Mi Gaming Laptop packs NVIDIA GTX 1060 graphics
Xiaomi already offers laptops (the Mi Notebook Pro and Mi Notebook Air), but it's now getting into PC gaming with a new model for the Chinese market. The literally-named Mi Gaming Laptop offers decent performance for the price, with a 15.6-inch wide-gamut color screen, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU, 7th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU and gaming keyboard, all for RMB 8,999 (around $1,440). Xiaomi didn't specify the size, but given the narrow screen bezels and brushed aluminum chassis, it should be compact and light for a 15.6-inch laptop.
Oculus taps Xiaomi to make its first standalone VR headset
Hugo Barra, head of VR at Facebook, has just announced at Qualcomm's CES press conference that Oculus has partnered with Xiaomi to make its first Oculus Go headset. It'll also make a second Oculus Go headset especially for the Chinese market called the Mi VR Standalone. Both headsets will be built on the Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile VR platform, and will ship with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset.
Xiaomi's answer to Alexa is a $45 smart speaker
Xiaomi's Mi division, which sells some accessories in the US but still no phones, is getting into smart speakers. It just unveiled the Mi AI Speaker, its equivalent to Amazon's Alexa, Google Home and other personal assistant-type models. However, it play music and take voice commands for a lot less, costing just 299 RMB or around $45 when it hits shelves in China starting next month.
Xiaomi to announce its 'Pinecone' mobile chipset this month
Following reports from earlier this month, today Xiaomi confirmed on Weibo that it will be announcing its very own mobile chipset, named after its subsidiary "Pinecone," in Beijing on February 28th. Little else is mentioned, but rumors going as far back as October are pointing to a Mi 5c aka "Meri" as the first device to carry this chip. Multiple Geekbench results suggest that the phone features an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and runs on Android 7.1.1 (even though the leaked prototypes still show Android 6.0).
Hugo Barra leaves Xiaomi and will return to Silicon Valley
VP Hugo Barra announced on Facebook that he'll be leaving Xiaomi and returning to Silicon Valley. Barra, who became a popular figure in the company both at home in Beijing and abroad, was a star at Google's Android division prior to his tenure at Xiaomi. He called his time in Beijing "the greatest and most challenging adventure of my life," and said he feels he's leaving Xiaomi in a "good place on its global expansion path." At the same time, he said that "living in such a singular environment has taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health."
Xiaomi flaunts a white model of its bezel-free Mi MIX phone
At Xiaomi's CES event today, it revealed a new, white color for its Mi MIX concept, a phone that is about as close to bezel-free as you'll get. As a reminder, it has a 6.5-inch 1080p, rounded-corner screen, but it's packed into a ceramic body that Xiaomi says is around the same size as a regular 5.5-inch smartphone. That's thanks to the lack of bezels, including almost no "forehead" at the top of the Philippe Starck-designed phone.
Xiaomi's curved Note 2 has a striking yet familiar look
It was only last month when Xiaomi launched the Mi 5s and Mi 5s Plus, but the Chinese company is already back with yet another flagship model. What we have here is the Mi Note 2 which, as you can tell by the name, is all about its large 5.7-inch 1080p display and generous 4,070 mAh battery. If it weren't for the missing stylus, you'd easily confuse the Mi Note 2 with the Samsung S7 Edge or Note 7: It comes in a familiarly gorgeous body design with curved glass on both sides, and yes, much like Samsung's offerings, the Mi Note 2 features a flexible OLED screen that lightly wraps around the edges, though it's just for looks for now. Not bad for a phone that starts from 2,799 yuan or about $413.
Xiaomi's $69 4K Android TV box arrives in the US
Xiaomi's Mi Box, a 4K Android TV device, is officially launching in the US from lunchtime today, priced at $69. If you want to pick one up, then you can head over to the company's official website or at your local Walmart in the very near future. Unless, of course, you happened to spot that the devices have actually been available on store shelves for the last couple of weeks. Then you can just sit back, enjoy your already-installed unit and ignore all of this talk of an official announcement.
Xiaomi's Mi 5s hides a fingerprint reader under its glass
We were already big fans of Xiaomi's Mi 5 flagship smartphone, so it's only natural for the Chinese company to build on this model's success by bringing us the Mi 5s. It should be no surprise that this dual-SIM device -- which has ditched the glass body in favor of metal -- packs Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 821 chipset (as featured on the ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe), meaning it offers not only improved computational performance but also super speedy tri-band 4G carrier aggregation. As a bonus, it features up to 128GB of fast UFS 2.0 storage plus up to 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and NFC is still there on the back. But what really got our attention this time is the new under-glass ultrasonic fingerprint reader on the front.
Xiaomi's foldable electric bicycle costs just $460
Xiaomi may not yet have a drone that can carry people, but at least it has an electric bicycle now, and it'll only cost you 2,999 yuan or about $460/£307. The Mi Qicycle is the second product from the Xiaomi-backed startup, iRiding, who released the premium 19,999 yuan (about $3,000/£2045) Qicycle R1 just back in March. This time round, iRiding is able to slap Xiaomi's "Mi" brand on its latest ride to target the mass market. While the Mi Qicycle weighs a total of 14.5kg (almost twice that of the carbon fiber-made R1), it can be folded into half its size for easier storage. It comes with a 3-speed hub plus a 250W motor which offers pedal assist, and that's good for up to 45km (about 28 miles) on a single charge.
Xiaomi's Mi Max phone has a huge display and a big battery
Xiaomi's next smartphone is a giant, dwarfing even its Mi Note and Mi Note Pro phablets in size. The new Mi Max comes with a 6.44-inch display and a beefy 4,850mAh battery -- which is both welcome and necessary, given the number of pixels you'll be pushing around every day. It's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 or 652 processor, as well as 4GB or 3GB of RAM, and 32GB or 128GB of internal storage. The two chipset choices are intriguing -- most flagships, such as the Galaxy S7, are using the Snapdragon 820, leaving the 652 to mid-range devices like the LG G5 SE.
Up close and personal with Xiaomi's gorgeous Mi 5
After a few minutes playing with Xiaomi's Mi 5, a thought runs through my head: "I really shouldn't be surprised." The company has found enormous success in its native China, to the point that new allotments of phones sell out in minutes. Since Xiaomi phones have virtually no presence in the United States (or the Western Hemisphere, for that matter), my previous experience with them was limited to fits of fondling in Hong Kong phone shops. Xiaomi just held its first European press conference here at Mobile World Congress and brought new Mi 5s to share, and now — finally — I get the appeal.
Xiaomi's latest mid-range phone is a sequel to the popular Mi 4
Xiaomi global VP Hugo Barra just rolled into a Barcelona press event on a hoverboard, but the company already unveiled its new devices at a companion event in Beijing. Beyond the high-end Mi 5 and its Snapdragon 820 chipset, we've also got Xiaomi's Mi 4s, a more-than-modest update to the very popular Mi 4. Seriously: Something like 16 million Mi 4 phones have been sold since its launch two years ago, and Xiaomi is clearly hoping to capture some more of that lightning in a bottle.
In China, $100 already gets you a nice metallic smartphone
Why yes, here's yet another dirt cheap Chinese smartphone from none other than Xiaomi. The Redmi 3 is the company's latest budget device that costs just 699 yuan (about $107) off contract, which is pretty good considering it comes with a metallic body, a generous 4,100 mAh battery, infrared remote feature and a secondary Nano SIM slot (can switch to 4G via software) that doubles as a microSD slot (up to 128GB). Impressively, this Android phone is just 144 grams heavy and 8.5mm thick, courtesy of the improved battery density as featured on the Mi 4i.
Xiaomi's $125 phone has the same heart as HTC's flagship
For those who don't know, Xiaomi has a budget line of smartphones called Redmi, but they've kind of fallen off our radar for some time. That's not the case with the latest model announced today. Following its predecessor, this Redmi Note 2 is sticking with the same 5.5-inch screen size but with a higher resolution of 1080p. What really caught our attention, though, is that despite the phone's $125 base price, it's powered by MediaTek's high-end Helio X10 chipset. That's the same octa-core silicon inside HTC's flagship M9+, which costs almost four times as much as the Redmi.
Xiaomi has a crazy slim 4K TV with pro-level colors
Xiaomi builds various products that have nothing to do with smartphones, and today it revealed two more: a 9.9mm thick 4K TV and a smart water purifier, of all things. So who cares about a 48-inch TV that will probably only be sold in Asia? Well, for $485 (or $645 with a sound bar), the Mi TV 2S is pretty interesting. Samsung made the panel, but Xiaomi built its own LED backlight module. It claims that lets it display a full, uncompressed YUV 4:4:4 color gamut at 4K and 60fps, a trick that only professional grade displays can normally pull off.
Xiaomi starts small with a UK online accessory store
Xiaomi is about to enter the UK market, but it won't be selling the Android phones and tablets it's best known for. Mimicking its plans for the US, the company is starting with an online accessory store for its Mi-branded headphones, battery packs and fitness trackers. Xiaomi will be taking orders from midday on May 19th, but be warned, as the store has been firmly branded with the "beta" label. As Android Authority reports, this means that all of the accessories will be available in limited quantities -- so once Xiaomi has sold through its pre-determined amounts, that'll be it. Game over. Products will ship directly from Xiaomi's warehouses in China, so be aware that you might have to pay some import duties. Clearly, Xiaomi is using this limited launch to test the UK's waters, but who knows, if it's successful maybe we'll see a full-time store selling its flagship Mi Note in the future.
Hugo Barra on why Xiaomi is against microSD cards in phones
If you were to compare iOS and Android, the latter's storage expansion option via microSD -- up to a whopping 200GB these days -- is often regarded as an advantage, though not all devices come with such offer. For instance, while HTC and LG have made the microSD slot a standard feature on their recent flagship devices, Samsung oddly decided to remove it from its Galaxy S6 series (ironically, the company has just announced new microSD cards). Xiaomi, on the other hand, seems to be on the fence: its flagship line has long ditched the microSD slot after its first-gen device, yet its affordable Redmi line uses said feature as a selling point. It's as if Xiaomi is contradicting itself, but Hugo Barra, the company's Vice President of International, gave us a more definitive answer after launching the Mi 4i in Hong Kong.
