The versatility and openness of Android allow OEMs to spawn their own distribution with custom skins on top. Popular examples include One UI (formerly Samsung Experience) from Samsung, OxygenOS from OnePlus, ColorOS from OPPO/Realme and of course, MIUI from Xiaomi.
However, the version numbering of these skins are not necessarily inline with Google’s scheme. Samsung publicly debuted One UI 1.x at the beginning of this year, and it was composed on top of Android 9.0 Pie.
On the other hand, both Huawei and OnePlus manually skipped a few numbers so that their in-house skins, i.e. EMUI and OxygenOS respectively, can continue simultaneously with the underlying layer of Android.
MIUI engineers chose a different formula. They prefer to maintain the upper layer mostly consistent across devices, while the Android version can differ. MIUI 10 is the current version of this skin, which was announced alongside the release of Mi 8 family back in 2018.
Each and every currently-supported phone and tablet with Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco branding is running MIUI 10, including Mi 9 and Redmi K20 Pro with Android Q beta. The next iteration, aka MIUI 11, should be revealed sometime around the next month, but that’s nothing speculation at this moment.
A few days ago, the Chinese OEM announced a long list of devices eligible for enrolling the Mi Pilot program – a replacement of the now-defunct global beta channel of MIUI. They also started recruiting volunteers to test Android Q based MIUI for Pocophone F1.
To be humble, these all are preparatory steps to build the foundation of the next big thing. Now we have another clue in hand: the MIUI team is going to shut down the development of MIUI China beta at the end of August. MIUI 9.8.29 would be the last MIUI 10 flavored build.
The 9.8.29 build should be available on existing devices by August 30. The announcement does not explicitly mention anything about MIUI 11, but the tone is pretty much clear.
The corresponding forum post further describes that Mi 8 (codename: dipper) and Redmi Note 4X (codename: mido) will not get further bleeding edge pre-beta updates. Owners of these two phones are advised to flash the stable/public beta channel MIUI for getting new OTAs.
Do you think Xiaomi will announce MIUI 11 on September 1? Comment below.
Credit goes to yshalsager and xiaomi.eu contributor Kacper Skrzypek (aka kacskrz) for the assistance.
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Kingshuk De
896 Posts
I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.
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