Xiaomi’s MIUI 10 Uses AI to Improve Camera & System Performance

Xiaomi’s homemade firmware, MIUI, has just received its latest update and has been overhauled with numerous AI features, performance optimizations, and exclusive support for bigger, bezel-less displays.

This is a major update as the company went for a complete UI change, the new MIUI also comes with redesigned Mi Apps. Xiaomi’s version of Android is pretty famous for being light and well-optimized, unlike Samsung’s TouchWiz, and is able to deliver a speedy experience without draining any extra resources, on top of being battery efficient.

It just got better – the main highlights of the new update include,

Full gesture support for larger displays, for phones like the Mi Mix lineup,

AI-powered portrait mode and background blur in photography, for all MIUI 10-supported devices including phones with a single camera set up instead of dual cameras,

A new recent apps menu that also supports new gestures,

Overhauled visuals of system apps, including Weather, Calendar, Lockscreen, etc.,

and much more,

Let’s take a look at some of the most noticeable and important changes in detail,

New UI Design, Gestures, & Visuals

MIUI 10 focuses on less clutter and a natural look, the interface has been redesigned for devices with trimmed top and bottom bezels, especially the Mi Mix family, so it supports a taller aspect ratio now. The same has been done for applications as well, including Mi Apps and built-in default Android apps as well.

The new skin has already been launched alongside Xiaomi’s recent flagship trio, the Mi 8, Mi 8 Explorer Edition, and the Mi 8 SE. 

The Mi phones will now come with a new “Recents” screen, which utilizes the latest tall-display trend and shows more apps together. Of course, you can use swipe gestures to remove apps from the Recents menu or to access other features such as multi-window. The previous version had an iPhone-like vertical card stack, this time MIUI 10 is putting larger displays to good use by realizing its full potential.

Additionally, in order to further increase display coverage, MIUI 10 utilizes on-screen gestures instead of hardware keys or Android navigation buttons. A simple swipe from the left edge takes you back and the bottom of the screen is used to go to the home screen or to access Recents menu.

It works quite well, the new navigation system has received positive feedback from the users. Each gesture starts an animation and its respective function runs quite fast thanks to MIUI’s efficient resource management.

Speed Fixes

Alongside foreground changes that are visible, MIUI has numerous background updates that significantly improve performance. The purpose is to make it more responsive, official figures promise 10% more responsiveness as compared to the previous version.

The company posted a performance test video and compared the speed of a Redmi Note 5 Pro running MIUI 10 with a Samsung J7 Duo. Take a look for yourself below,

The Redmi Note 5 Pro got a higher score, even though both phones run equal hardware, and was able to launch apps 3 times faster than the Samsung Experience 9.0-powered J7 Duo. This has been achieved by background system optimization features, such as,

Lock-free critical path,

Background activity management,

Co-dependent prioritizing,

Real-time defragmentation,

Critical background acceleration,

and much more.

It also uses AI to predict user interaction with the device. This improves performance, as the AI monitors your routine and day-to-day usage of your device, it anticipates your actions and preloads apps so that they launch and switch faster.

Nature Sounds & AI Selfies

MIUI 10 now comes with new notification sounds and animations, the new sound library features sounds from nature such as sounds of water droplets. It uses these sounds for various system events, notifications pop-up one after another to form a “rhythmic pattern”.

No two leaves are alike and similarly no notification sound in MIUI 10 are the same. We used a lot of these nature’s sounds and built it right into the core of the system. For e.g. If you delete a notes with two finger swipe up gesture, it sounds like sand – Natural and cheerful.

Lastly, Xiaomi managed to pack the portrait mode feature within the OS. It also plugs in AI photography into standard camera apps of even non-dual camera devices that traces its subject and generates an artificial background blur, or bokeh effect.

A dual camera set up uses a secondary depth sensor to deliver a realistic background blur, MIUI comes with a software feature instead that gives this capability to single lens cameras as well.

Rollout Schedule

Just like before, Xiaomi is rolling out this new update to most of its device – including those that were launched more than 2 years ago. Here are the devices that are included in the list,

MIUI 10’s beta version will start rolling out to the aforementioned devices in mid-June. It will be pushed via OTA, do note that some regions might get it a bit later.