Xiaomi has unveiled its Mi Watch - the
first smartwatch to bear the Mi branding. It brings some serious features so
much so that Xiaomi is marketing the devices as a "small phone on your
wrist”. The watch comes with a 1.78-inch
AMOLED screen with always-on capabilities housed in a 44mm casing. 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’s also Bluetooth, NFC and eSIM support which allow the
smartwatch to function completely autonomously.
The Mi Watch runs on Xiaomi’s MIUI for watch on top
of Google’s Wear OS - the first customized version of the Google smartwatch
platform to date. MIUI for watch has 40+ built-in apps and a separate app store
that is now open for third-party developers. It also brings all the usual
fitness tracking features including swim tracking and is compatible with
Firstbeat’s performance analytics which gives you a detailed breakdown of your
heart rate data based on different exercises.
Under the hood, we have the Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G
chipset paired with 1 GB RAM and 8GB storage. Battery life is rated at up to 36
hours of continuous use with 4G turned on. Xiaomi used a 570 mAh battery inside
the MI Watch, which is the biggest cell ever put in a smartwatch. For now, the Mi Wach will remain
exclusive to China and there’s no word on international availability. It’s
scheduled to hit the Chinese market on November 11 and will retail for CNY
1,299 (US$ 185).
There’s also a Premium Edition Mi Watch which comes
with a sapphire crystal screen, stainless steel frame and band. That one will
go for CNY 1,999 (US$ 285) and is expected to come out before the end of the year.
