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It was back in September of last year that the folks at Xiaomi introduced the (now sold out) Xiaomi Mi3 smartphone. During the event, they managed to throw everyone for a curve ball when they introduced their new 47-inch smart TV in lieu of a tablet. In an age where just about every Android OEM makes a tablet, it was a bit puzzling to find them glossing over the bigger form factor, especially given their custom Android UI (also known as MIUI) wasn’t well suited for tablets.
Today, it looks like they’re finally covering their bases (at least somewhat) after introducing an all new version of MIUI fully optimized for tablets. This new version MIUI features new apps, animations, and UI elements — all built from the ground up to take advantage of the the extra screen real estate on tablets. While this still leaves out official Xiaomi-made tablet hardware, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun mentions in his blog that OEMs now have the option to ship their own hardware with MIUI pre-loaded, a first for the custom ROM.
The ROM is currently in open beta where it can be downloaded and installed on the Nexus 7 2013 (WiFi-only). Anyone thinking about giving this a spin?
Always liked the look of MIUI, does anyone know if they ever worked out their GPL issues?
Not entirely I don’t think. You can find some open source code here for some app and some kernels here: https://github.com/MiCode
Not open source. Won’t touch it out of principle.
Pleb. Open source isn’t always good.
Pleb. Great insult since 200BC.
I know right?
Google’s app package isn’t open source and neither are over 99% of the apps in the Play Store. Do you use those?
And if we were talking about apps that would be totally relevant but we are talking about operating systems. Do you use an OS or even know what one is?
Any OS based on Linux is supposed to be open source.
Might give it a try with my spare.
Wish I had a spare smartphone.
Works fine you need to flash gapps
Only real issue I’ve encountered with it so far is that the Select/Cut/Copy/Paste popups seem to alternate between English and Chinese, and one time the popups didn’t show at all. Had to go through two different browsers before I found one that had its own.
Another issue, at least for me, is that sometimes it’s hard to tell if you have notifications. I’m so used to AOSP/CM notifications, where they all gather along the status bar. Just seeing the three dots is a nice minimalistic look, but is a step back in functionality if you ask me.