I am cool with all kinds of shells, especially those that change as much as possible Android and its interface. But recently, by chance, Xiaomi Mi 9T turned out to be in my hands, and at the very first turn on he offered to upgrade to the global version MIUI 11. For a few days of using it I got a lot of pleasure from it, so today I will share the chips that I especially liked.
AOD customization and screen breathing
MIUI 11 implemented a whole block of settings for Always On Display. Now you can choose from a variety of animations, analog and digital clocks, custom labels and just cool pictures. Moreover, inside the images, something can also be customized.
The picture I installed with the astronaut caused a lively reaction both in the comments under one of my past materials, and among friends and acquaintances. Several people now want Xiaomi on MIUI 11 just because of this thing.
Unfortunately, you cannot view the notifications on the AOD screen, as it is in Samsung smartphones, here, but customization in its current form is a big and positive step from the outside Xiaomi. By the way, it will be useful for developers in the future to open this opportunity 'on the side' and add a section with splash screens for AOD to 'Themes'.
In addition to a wide selection of screensavers, a 'screen breathing' feature was added for AOD. When a notification arrives, an animation is triggered on the screen. The thing is useful, because you immediately pay attention to such notifications if the device is on the table and the sound is turned off. At the same time, the screen does not light up – everything is within the AOD.
By the way, in MIUI 11, you can still slightly customize the clock on the lock screen by placing it on the left, in the middle or vertically. Another nice little thing.
Situational alarms and notification sounds
For this chip, the developers MIUI definitely need to erect a monument in the vicinity of the Beijing office Xiaomi. In the notification settings, you can set up a situational alarm that will sound differently depending on the weather and time of day, or set the alarm ringtone to automatically change every week. You know that you start to hate even your favorite song if it wakes you up in the morning for a long time. And with MIUI 11 such negative emotions in life will be much less.
A similar trick works with notification sounds. If you put something from natural sounds, then they will change depending on the time of day. For example, the smartphone will chirp loudly during the day, and cricket sounds at night. A trifle, but funny, because this is how the shell becomes a little bit 'alive'.
Mi Share
On the company's devices Apple there is a wonderful thing called AirDrop, thanks to which you can instantly send any files between gadgets. With the help of it, gadgets quickly establish a connection with each other via Bluetooth, create a Wi-Fi bridge and exchange data through it.
In MIUI 11, a similar feature appeared on smartphones Xiaomi. Moreover, you can exchange files not only with devices of this brand, but also with Oppo smartphones, Vivo and Realme. I hope that Xiaomi will not stop there and, firstly, will expand cooperation on Mi Share with other manufacturers, and secondly, will make Mi Share as a separate application for Windows and macOS . And further than the devil is not joking, maybe it will also achieve compatibility with AirDrop.
Although I was joking about the latter, here's a funny thing: my test Xiaomi Mi 9T in some strange way is able to disguise itself as Apple – a device in access point mode. iPhone 11 and MacBook Air see it this way, and you can see it by the icon in the status bar (two links instead of the Wi-Fi icon). In addition, iPhone 11 understands that we have a mobile hotspot, and by default it activates traffic saving. This is the first time I've encountered such curious behavior.
Google camera almost out of the box
MIUI 11 has a nice built-in application for taking photos and videos, but many advanced users prefer to use Google's 'Camera' because of its incredible algorithms. So, the developers MIUI took into account the interests of geeks, which is very commendable, and integrated into the 11th version of the Camera2 shell the APIs necessary for full work with the Google Camera ports.
All the owner of Xiaomi needs to do to MIUI 11 is to find a suitable port for their device. I managed to do this in a couple of minutes at one well-known forum. The Mi 9T immediately got HDR +, Night Sight, and all the other Google Camera features. No Root, bootloaders and similar shamanism.
Animations and interface
The shell MIUI 11 has received a noticeable interface update and looks very cool. Beautiful animations for opening and closing programs (and their icons), a redesigned settings menu, the appearance of a dark mode at the system level – all this left a very pleasant impression. The interface iOS, of course, does not reach the smoothness of the interface, but it is not so noticeable. MIUI 11 is one of the few skins that suits my inner perfectionism to a large extent.
Pay attention to the animation of the icons
Unfortunately, a new proprietary font Mi Lan Pro has not yet been added to the global firmware, which supports flexible changes in thickness. But this is probably a matter of time and its full adaptation to the Cyrillic alphabet. With it, the shell will become even more pleasant, so long as the developers do not delay this issue, because at the presentation MIUI 11 the adaptability of the font for different alphabets sounded like one of the main features of Mi Lan Pro.
What is missing in global MIUI 11 yet?
Since we are talking about the missing functionality, then I will briefly go through the other declared chips, which are not yet in the 'global'.
In the battery settings, the ultra-power saving mode is not yet visible, which, according to Xiaomi, allows you to live on a 5% charge for a whole day. Also, a single switch for advertising has not appeared – it is still hidden in the settings of the built-in applications, and you have to disable it in each of them. There is also no built-in Mi Work office suite for working with documents and spreadsheets without installing third-party applications. Well, the last thing I would like to see, but this is not, is a 24-hour wallpaper with a dynamic landscape that changes throughout the day, as in the latest versions of macOS.
Hopefully most of these things will appear in the global versions MIUI 11.
Conclusion
It's nice to see Xiaomi go in the right direction with its shell. After updating to the 11th version, the system became more pleasant both visually and functionally. And, importantly, these changes are far from cosmetic.
I definitely recommend the owners of compatible Xiaomi updates, and the rest of the fans Android should take a closer look at the new products of the Chinese company. MIUI 11 I definitely 'got it' and even got into my personal list of favorites among all shells. Keep it up Xiaomi!