At a launch event in China, Xiaomi has announced a slew of products including its much-awaited flagship phones Xiaomi 12, Xiaomi 12 Pro and MIUI 13 – the skin that will run on all Xiaomi devices.
This new skin runs on top of Android 12 and comes with all the latest features of Google’s latest operating system. Among the key additions in MIUI 13 are the Mi Sans font and improved security features.
With the new MIUI 13, Xiaomi wants devices to communicate with each other seamlessly. The company has introduced a dedicated operating system for devices including MIUI 13 Pad, MIUI Watch, MIUI Home, and MIUI TV rivalling Apple's operating systems for various devices. The company says that this will not only complete its ecosystem but will help improve cooperation between devices within the same network.
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MIUI 13 is a multi-device platform – What’s new
Xiaomi says that its latest operating system from Xiaomi focuses on improving privacy and security. The latest operating system will be rolled out to the eligible Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco devices soon.
The new operating system offers 52 per cent more fluidity than the current MIUI 12.5 and will include the new Mi Sans font to give Xiaomi devices a new look and feel.
Talking about the improved privacy settings, the MIUI 13 introduced three-layered security features - Face verification protection, privacy watermarking, and electronic fraud protection.
To make sure that people with similar facial features are not able to unlock the device, MIUI 13 will capture the top half of the torso and will match it every time to unlock the device. Thus, ensuring that people with different body structures will not be allowed in.
Electronic fraud protection is sort of a list of websites and devices that could be harmful to the user. This system will warn users of fraudulent apps, websites, calls and even messages. The Privacy Watermarking feature on MIUI 13 will allow users to protect their ID documents stored on the devices and will limit applications that need to access the original documents.
Apart from these, there are new wallpapers, colours and a plethora of widgets to offer useful data and information to the users throughout the day.
MIUI 13 Pad
The MIUI 13 Pad is Xiaomi’s response to iPad OS and is designed for large-screened devices like Mi Pad 5 – which unfortunately isn’t available in India and other markets.
Needless to say, it is designed to use the screen real estate on offer on large-screened devices and helps improve productivity and multitasking. With MIUI 13 Pad, Xiaomi has added drag-and-drop, dragging, pinch-to-resize, or opening an app directly into a small window feature apart from an iPad OS like a universal taskbar. We aren’t really sure if Xiaomi’s foldable phone – Mi Mix Fold will receive the MIUI 13 Pad OS or not.
MIUI 13 rollout
Xiaomi says that the new OS will roll out “soon” to all the eligible devices, however, it has not revealed a specific date as yet. The latest Xiaomi 12 series phones will ship with MIUI 13 out of the box and are expected to be made available to the Mi 11 series early next year. We will have to wait for the official announcement around its availability on devices of its sub-brands like Poco and Redmi.
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