Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun took to Weibo the other day to confirm that the company’s forthcoming Shenzhen event on May 31st would be used to announce multiple product launches. A device we may see is the Xiaomi Mi 7, but that’s unconfirmed. What we will for sure be seeing is the Xiaomi Mi 8 alongside MIUI 10. MIUI is the company’s custom Android skin and is packed full of features. MIUI 10 is the latest iteration, and as such is expected to have new features and improvements over its predecessor.
The text at the bottom roughly translates to say that MIUI 10 is “faster than lightning”.
We don’t officially know anything about MIUI 10, but some have speculated that the latest beta updates to MIUI 9 will actually be MIUI 10. They show a drastically different UI and full-screen navigation gestures. Right now, these changes are only present on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.
While Xiaomi has a history of providing updates for their older phones, MIUI 10 will only run on devices higher than Android 5.0 Lollipop. This bids a final farewell to older devices that the company still updated. Owners of those older devices won’t like it, but it may be that unnecessary money and time was being put into keeping those devices up to date. With Xiaomi also opening a dedicated smartphone camera development department, it may be that they are taking software seriously in order to compete with the best. As a result, it doesn’t make sense to focus on time on older devices.
Xiaomi Mi 8 Promotional Poster
What’s interesting is that the Xiaomi Mi 8 appears to be what the Mi 7 would have been. The company mentions that they are launching the Mi 8 for their 8 year anniversary, so it could be that they skipped a number in order to keep it in line with the age of the company. If that is the case, then we know quite a lot about the device already. If it is indeed the Mi 7, it will have a notched AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 845 (as confirmed), and a possible 3,500mAh battery. It will also possibly be the first Xiaomi device to launch with Always on Display, which very few phones have.