Those of you who customise your phones may have experimented with MIUI – a highly popular custom ROM which runs on a variety of handsets. Add to that variety one more handset – MIUI will now run on it’s own dedicated platform as well, as the MIUI phone was just announced in China (where Xiaomi, the company behind MIUI, is based).
The MI-ONE, or Millet as it is properly known, features a dual core 1.5GHz MSM8260 Scorpion CPU (from the 3rd generation Snapdragon family). This thing is fast.
Besides the CPU, the MI-ONE has an Adreno220 GPU, 4GB of ROM and 1GB of RAM, a 4″ Sharp screen (854×480 – not qHD), 8MP rear camera, and a powerful1930mAh battery. The bootloader is also unlocked, and runs (unsurprisingly) MIUI OS based on Android 2.3.5.
The phone weighs 149 grams, a bit heavier than one of its most notable competitors – Samsung’s Galaxy S2 at 116 grams. The cost – 1999 Chinese yuan, which is equal to roughly $313 USD, or around $300 AUD. This means you’re looking at a shade over $300 for a phone that is in many ways (good ways) identical to phones that cost two to three times as much.
For now, it will only be available in China, but undoubtedly (like most things) it’ll make its way to other shores, hopefully ours as well!
lets hope Mobicity imports these! would love to get one to try out and maybe even replace the HTC Incredible S, depending on how good it really is…. good to see they didn’t use a glossy casing, another plus about this phone!
Not much room in that price to copy it and sell them worldwide! 😉
Wow, that’s a fantastic price for that hardware. It will be interesting to see what the build quality is like.
Its just crazy for it to be that cheap. Under $500 for something like that is nuts.
What networks does it support – coming from someone tied into NextG due to remote location.
I would think that it’s unlikely to use Next G frequencies, given they don’t use them in China.. but you never know.. they might just make it quadband 3G and surprise us all.
Note, I read the comments on the MIUI post linked to in the 2nd para, and it does refer to the phone working on ATT HSDPA (which uses the same frequency as Next G) – so many it will work on Telstra. If we hear about a full spec sheet, we’ll update the post with the info.
T’is NextG: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/xiaomi-m1-with-miui-os-a-310-phone-with-1-5ghz-dual-core-soc-a/
“WCDMA: 850/1900/2100”
Right, now I want one.
Will buy this phone, and flash Cyanogen over it.
Not to say that i have ever tried miui (Is it any good?), i hear its very iphoney
It’s not bad. I installed it on my Desire a few days ago when I saw this announcement go by.
The main things you’d notice coming from any other Android:
* there’s no app drawer, all installed apps just get an icon on a home screen, remove the icon and it uninstalls the app; and
* complete reskinning of interface elements, e.g., toggle buttons, that sort of thing
I also noticed that K9 seems to look a little smoother than it did running on Oxygen and CM7.1. Think they may be including some different fonts.
It is really awesome. Great UI with all the android stuff. Looks fantastic, runs beautifully and has soooo many extra features over cyanogen or standard roms. (Built in ftp server through file browser, full theming on the fly (lockscreens, fonts, icons, notification bar), awesome miui music app, miui backup, miui gallery, miui stats!!)
I have miui on my Desire HD and use go launcher.I can honestly say it’s the best custom rom ive used to date.