Yesterday, Xiaomi introduced the new version of its Custom UI, MIUI 9, to the world. MIUI is the company’s Custom User Interface that runs on all its smartphones. This Custom UI is heavily forked to look like iOS and this is a good or a bad thing depending on who you ask.
That aside, MIUI 9 is here and is based on Android Nougat 7.0. It comes with three key features that include Smart assistant, Image Search and Smart app launcher. These are just the three main features in addition to all the Android Nougat goodies you get with the update. At the moment, MIUI 9 is available exclusively in China but expect a global roll out very soon.
Starting with Smart assistant, it is helpful in finding anything on your phone from text to photos. This is sort of like Google Assistant and to access it, just swipe to right when on the home screen and you will get the search option along with the news, app suggestions and a couple of customizable widgets.
The Image Search on the other hand lets you search the images by keywords of what is in the picture. You can type words such as “selfie”, “face” and “blue” and these will up photos that contain what you are searching.
The last feature is the Smart app launcher which launches an app based on the screen contents. For example, it will be able to open maps when you are talking about going somewhere. This is pretty cool but I am not sure exactly how it will work or if it will work all the time.
The three features discussed above are the main ones with MIUI 9. The company has also said that even though it announced them, not all of them will be available in the Global ROM, some will be limited to China only.
Xiaomi went ahead to say that with MIUI 9, launch time of apps is faster than before. The company says that it is able to achieve this thanks to a particular CPU acceleration and better haptic feedback. Furthermore, when you are using one app, the system resources will prioritize it to make sure better performance.
Now to availability, Xiaomi says that the first batch of MIUI 9 China Developer ROM will be released for the Xiaomi Mi 6, Mi 5X, and Redmi Note 4X (the Qualcomm model). The second batch will roll out as from August 25 and will be available for the Xiaomi Mi MIX, Mi Note 2, Mi 5, Mi 5s, Mi 5s Plus, Mi 5c, Mi Max 2, Mi Max, Mi 4S, Mi 4c, Mi Note Pro, and Redmi 4X.
The final batch will roll out in late September to all other Xiaomi and Redmi devices.
Also Read: Here Are The Xiaomi Devices That Will Be Getting Android Nougat Update
