Xiaomi has officially unveiled the latest iteration of its highly successful Android ROM, MIUI 6. While there’s been huge celebrations in the form of a one-day sale offering huge discounts in China and its other international markets, the main focus today is with the revamp of one of the most-used ROMs in the market. MIUI 6 is, in Xioami’s words, “visually stunning, stunningly simple”.
It is easy to see why Xiaomi went with the “visually stunning, stunningly simple” tagline. Combining a mix of vibrant colours with a flat UI, MIUI 6 also appears to be heavily influenced by features from other mobile operating systems, with plenty of visual cues from iOS. That being said, many aspects that made MIUI unique has been retained. Here’s how MIUI 6 looks like:
MIUI 6 also introduces a fresh set of icons which while largely similar to MIUI v5, has a flatter look corresponding to the overall feel of the UI. In addition, MIUI 6 employs heavier use of translucency, encompassing the notification shade and dialler. On top of that, some apps also introduce a 3D parallax effect that was first seen on iOS 7.
The multitasking feature has also been tweaked, offering an expanded preview of running apps similar to the cards style multitasking seen on iOS and Windows Phone. From the video, it isn’t immediately clear how this expanded view works, since to icons-style multitasking view is still present.
Beyond the visuals, MIUI 6 also adds several new features. Notifications can now be sorted into different levels of importance, where less important notifications will only pus subtle prompts. It’s actually a feature that’s been expanded from MIUI v5, where advanced users can actually tweak which notifications they’d like to receive.
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In addition, the Calendar app can now also display things like upcoming holidays, sports matches and even TV shows with a new “subscribe” feature. The camera app has been updated to support a swipe-down gesture to switch between front and rear cameras – a feature we liked very much on the HTC’s Sense 6.
Xiaomi is promising more updates on the new features in MIUI 6, so it is likely we haven’t seen everything this revamped ROM has to offer. This is the company’s most ambitious iteration of MIUI yet, and it is rightly so that Xiaomi is calling it the start of a new chapter.
For now, Xiaomi will be testing MIUI 6 on 1000 beta testers using the Mi 3 and Mi 4 smartphones. By next week, the company aims to increase the number by tenfold to 10,000 testers, before offering a developer build in early September. Xiaomi is hoping to unveil a stable consumer build of MIUI 6 around October.
(Sources: Xiaomi (Facebook))
