Xiaomi phones are really impressive. Besides boasting some of thebest camera specsof any smartphone line on the market, the sheer quality of the company’s internals as well as its ability to keep up with modern trends likefoldable phonespushes it towards the front of the pack. It’s unfortunate for some of our readers that these products aren’t usually sold in Western markets, because with the right branding, they could really catch on.
That’s enough gushing, though, because Xiaomi has had a problem for a number of years with the Android skin it’s used since the early 2010s. It’s called MIUI, and while it looks pretty nice, it has a tendency to get bogged down with all the extra coding and infrastructure powering some of its features. Earlier this week, Xiaomi announced that its new operating system,called HyperOS, would be released soon, but didn’t provide any looks at the software. Now we’re getting our first look, and we’re initially underwhelmed.
GSMArenaposted screenshots of the operating system it had gotten from users on Weibo that gained early access, and it looks pretty similar to what we have seen before with MIUI. It appears that there are more customization options for the lock screen as well as more in-depth widget alterations, but besides that (and a very slight quick settings menu update), not much else has changed visually. It feels a bit disappointing, but at the same time, is it really such a bad thing to stick with what has worked for over a decade?
(Source:GSMArena)
Twitter userRajesh Rajputalso shared a video showcasing the HyperOS lock screen next to the standard Android 14 lock screen on a Pixel phone. In it, you can see sleek animations and an iPhone-like effect that obscures portions of text behind the lock screen wallpaper. So at least one area of the OS has seen some major visual improvements.
Maybe we’re underwhelmed because of the big announcement thatXiaomi made on Xthe other day. If anything, that made it seem like a total revamp was coming to the operating system, visuals and all. However, in another post, the company’s global vice president, Alvin, said the HyperOS will bring “hyper performance, fluidity and connectivity across smartphones….” and that it has a “completely new rewritten architecture.”
The MIUI design is sleek, so some slight alterations to improve the user interface aren’t such a bad thing. If it truly does have a completely rewritten architecture, as Alvin said, then the user experience has the potential to be so much better than what it’s been. Gone could be the days of the quickly sluggish UI. A better user experience with the UI could, in turn, make the interface feel so much newer than it actually looks.
We may be looking into it a bit much, but Xiaomi is, after all, close to releasing theXiaomi Pro 14, which looks like it will have a huge camera humpand ditch the curved screen in place of a flat panel. New hardware releasing alongside new software is a tale as old as time itself. HyperOS is set to be available as a global ROM in 2024 and ship with the Xiaomi 14 Series, and along with Xiaomi committing toproviding four generations of Android OS updates and five years of security patchesto its latest offerings in the Xiaomi 13T and 13T Pro, there’s a lot of bright things in store for the Chinese tech company.
