There are a lot of “official”, OEM-developed Android skins around, each with its own confusing name, unique personality, special set of flaws and ways to taint the “pure Google” experience.
But Xiaomi’s MIUI feels like a stronger and stronger candidate for the title of most heavily modified Android-based platform in the world. Long accused of ripping off iOS to bring the best of both worlds together, the “Mi User Interface” is getting a major facelift today… to ape some essential Google Assistant functionality for a change.
It’s not that Xiaomi’s proprietary “smart assistant” sounds unskilled or useless. But it’s far from original, finding inspiration in Siri and even Bixby’s (theoretical) capabilities, as well as the Google Assistant.
MIUI 9 touts support for the “easiest way to find anything and almost everything at your will”, “powerful” image search and a neat smart app launcher that wants to help you dig up “vital information” online based on the contents of your social interactions.
Fortunately, that’s not all, as the overhauled UI also enables “explosively fast app launch-times”, with a fancy technology dubbed dynamic resource allocation basically ensuring apps and services that are actually in use get the most “resources” for silky smooth operation even on humbler hardware.
Many other vague but exciting “system optimization” features are boasted, including automatic cleaning, critical background acceleration, cache management, real-time anti-fragmentation and haptic feedback optimization, though only time will tell how practical these things ultimately shape up.
Last but not least on Xiaomi’s list of high-profile announcements earlier today, the Mi AI Speaker goes for Amazon Echo’s jugular with a tall, elegant design and crazy low pricing. Namely, just RMB 299, or $45.
Incredibly enough, the Xiaomi Mi AI Speaker matches Apple’s HomePod in terms of sheer number of microphones (six omnidirectional bad boys for 360-degree audio sensing), allegedly sporting “excellent sound quality”, “advanced” echo cancellation and voice control for music streaming, playing audio books, children stories, live radio, plus third-party “add-ons and plugins.” Too bad this is unlikely to ever make it out of China.
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