Xiaomi unveiled its first smartwatch, the Mi Watch, Tuesday in the launch event (full recap here in Chinese) for its Mi CC9 Pro in Beijing, bringing unique features as to Xiaomi calling the devices a "small phone on your wrist”.
(Photo: Xiaomi)
High-end specs with low prices
The Mi Watch has a 44mm face covered by a 1.78-inch AMOLED screen with a 326ppi pixel density and offers the always-on capability.
The most notable feature is the Apple Watch-like shape. It has a rectangular touchscreen face with rounded corners.
The back is made from ceramic and there is a single button and crown on the right-hand side that are used to operate the interface. The left houses a single speaker and microphone.
There will be two versions available -- one with an aluminum body and strap, and one with a stainless steel bezel and strap.
Inside the metal housing, there’s also Bluetooth, NFC and eSIM support which allow the smartwatch to function completely autonomously.
(Photo: Xiaomi)
The Mi Watch has a 570mAh battery that promises to last up to 36 hours of use.
It is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset with four Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz, coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8GB storage.
It’s will be available to Chinese customers on November 11 and the standard model will retail for 1,299 yuan ($185), which again made people in China calling it a “price killer” which means super low prices.
The Mi Watch also has a Premium Edition that comes with a sapphire crystal screen, stainless steel frame and band that is priced at 1,999 yuan ($285) and is expected to come out before the end of the year.
Currently, the Mi Watch will remain exclusive to the Chinese market and Xiaomi didn’t mention when it will be available to the international market.
MIUI for Watch
The Mi Watch runs on Xiaomi’s MIUI for Watch, which is based on Google’s Wear OS.
It is the first customized version of the Google smartwatch platform to date, triggering memory when the company was established nine year ago by offering customized MIUI for phones.
(Photo: Xiaomi)
MIUI for Watch has more than 40 built-in apps including Douyin (TikTok in China) and QQ Messenger and a separate app store that is now open for third-party developers.
The company’s own XiaoAI assistant is the default virtual digital assistant on the watch.
It also brings all the usual fitness tracking features including swim tracking and is compatible with Firstbeat’s performance analytics.
However, due to the limited screen size and storage, the watch might not support the installation of regular Android apps. So these apps are basically the lightweight versions of the regular Android Apps.
