Android tablets are now officially confirmed as a soon-to-be-extinct breed of gadgets, as Google no longer interested to invest more resource in this form factor anymore. You can, however, grab tablets running Android from different OEMs, but the future is truly uncertain.
Call it a coincidence, but one of the most popular phone-tablet hybrids (popularly known as ‘phablet’) has ended their journey. Yes, we are talking about none other than the Mi Max lineup from Xiaomi.
The phones are getting larger, and the trend of true bezel less design enables them to achieve large screen space in the without altering the form factor. Nonetheless, the Mi Max series successfully built their own fan following in these years – people are really upset about the demise of this iconic lineup.
The second generation Mi Max was released back in 2017, resembling Redmi Note 4 in a number of factors. Both phones were powered by the highly energy efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC, while the Mi Max 2 packed a significantly larger battery (5,300 mAh) to drive the hefty 6.44 inches screen.
However, the phone (or should I say phablet?) faced a difficult situation in terms of software updates. Mi Max 2 was initially launched with MIUI 9.5 based on Android Nougat, but never received a single major Android version update!
Xiaomi did bring MIUI 10 update for Mi Max 2 users, but the frequency was rather pathetic. The phone recently started to get the second MIUI 10 build with the version number 10.3.1.0, but the base Android version remained unchanged.
The size of the incremental OTA from MIUI 10.2.1.0 is less than 400 MB, but the changelog is rather large. As this is the first update from the MIUI 10.3 branch, Xiaomi engineers packed a lot of goodies inside.
Phone
– Fix: Ending calls took longer time than expected
Lockscreen, status bar, Notification shade
– New: You can restrict opening Notification shade on the Lock screen now
– New: Introducing customizable Lock screen clock (Settings > Lock screen & password > Advanced settings). New Lock screen clock doesn’t work with third party themes.
– Optimization: Face unlock efficiency
– Fix: Call time bubble overlapped with notification icons
– Fix: Status bar shortcut and floating notification for calls appeared at the same time
– Fix: Sync page couldn’t be refreshed whenever sync was turned on or off in the Notification shade
– Fix: Face data was recorded too fast
– Fix: Screen went black in some cases when video wallpapers were used
Mi Cloud
– Optimization: We redesigned Mi Cloud’s start page. It looks much better now!
Apart from the new lock screen clock and improved face unlock, Mi Max 2 users are stuck with 3 months old March security patches with Android 7.0 Nougat.
There is hardly any chance left for the phone to get Oreo/Pie update, although Xiaomi’s other phones with SD625 (Redmi 6 Pro, Mi A1, Mi A2 Lite) are happily running without any hiccups.
The download links of both the recovery and fastboot flashable packages are available now, which indicates the updates reached proper stable status. Grab them from the following links:
- Device: Mi Max 2
- Codename: oxygen
- Channel: Global Stable
- Version: V10.3.1.0.NDDMIXM
- Android: 7.1.1
Credit goes to yshalsager and the Xiaomi Firmware Updater project for tracking the OTA update URLs.
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Tags
Mi Max 2
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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