Xiaomi unveils MIUI 8, Mi Max smartphone in India

After a China launch in May, Chinese smartphone-maker Xiaomi on Thursday launched in India its Mi Max smartphone, with the largest screen in its line-up to date, and MIUI 8 -- the next generation of its Android-based operating system (OS) with new colour schemes and animations.

The device comes with two processor variants -- Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 and 652 -- and, combined with the Adreno 510 graphics chip, delivers a great multimedia and gaming experience.

While Mi Max with snapdragon 650, 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM is available for Rs 14,999, the Snapdragon 652 variant, powered by eight Cortex A72 and A53 cores, with 128 GB storage will be available soon for Rs 19,999. All the devices will be available on Mi.com from July 6 and other online partners from July 13.

Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra said that with Mi Max, the company has established a new smartphone category in India.

"We disrupted the market for sub-10,000 smartphones when we launched Redmi in India. We also created the sub-10,000 5.5-inch smartphone category. We bring Mi Max in India and believe that it is a sweet spot between the mobility of smartphone and immersivness of a tablet," he added.

The 6.44-inch supersized screen Mi Max smartphone has super immersive sunlight display that delivers accurate colours even in bright conditions. It comes with a large 4,850mAh battery that can support up to 14 hours of streaming video (via Wi-Fi) in a single charge.

The 7.5mm slim metal body smartphone has chamfered edges and 2.5D front glass surface. The display is protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

The Dual-SIM device, which has a hybrid slot with an option to extend the storage by 128 GB, is packed with 13MP primary camera with Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) and a 5MP selfie shooter.

Mi Max runs on Android Marshmallow and is available in three colours - gold, silver and gray.

Xiaomi also unveiled MIUI 8 with new design, several features and optimisations such as protecting two accounts with different password or fingerprint.

The new UI offers changes in the gallery view for panoramas and screenshots. With MIUI 8, user can free space up to 90 per cent with Mi Cloud Photo Sync. MiUI 8 has made video editing simpler by 'one button video editing'.

Introducing a new feature Quickball for easy navigation for apps, the new interface not offers one-hand operation for dialpad but also for google keyboard. The calculator app is upgraded with option to convert currency, weight, temperature, etc.

With MIUI a user can create two accounts of a single app on one phone, for example, users can have two instances of Whatsapp on the same phone that correspond to different accounts, removing the inconvenience of having to log in and out on the same app.

MIUI 8 also builds in several technology breakthroughs such as being able to clone apps and manage multiple accounts on the same phone.

Xiaomi has introduced ringtones from Bollywood movies, T9 Hindi language and MIUI caller ID to identify the callers for the first time in India.

Beta testing for MIUI 8 in India will start on July 11 with support for Mi 2, Mi 3, Mi 4, Mi 4i, Mi 5, Mi Max, the entire Redmi and Redmi Note series and the Mi Note series. All the supported smartphones will be updated by August 16.

The company has many offerings in Xiaomi's content space. It is providing a three-month movie and a year's music subscription for first one million users of Mi Max, Mi 5and Redmi note 3.

Barra also announced Mi Maximus -- the flasgship device of 2017.

--IANS

sku/vd/dg