Farewell MIUI: it’s really the end of an era for Xiaomi

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2010 is the year when it all begins: 6 April marks the founding of Xiaomi, while the birth of MIUI is set for August 16, shortly after. In our in-depth article we traced with utmost precision the history of MIUI, from its beginnings up to the debut of the initial HyperOS version.

As longtime Mi Fans will know, the brand’s first product wasn’t a phone but its iconic proprietary interface. MIUI was born as a Custom ROM for third-party smartphones, on the Android 2.2 Froyo base, and quickly achieved notable success.

The secret? Needless to say, the updates: weekly beta versions, the constant addition of new features and a growing number of smartphones supported. The perfect recipe to earn users’ praise and create a Community of enthusiasts, clearly with an eye for tinkers – given the broad support for modding.

One of MIUI’s main aspects concerns the customization: Xiaomi has from the start abandoned Android’s minimalism to give the end user ample room to maneuver. The result is a ROM rich in features and lots of proprietary apps for Phone, Messages, Notes, Music and Gallery, up to themes (to modify icons, sounds, fonts and other elements).

It is thanks to MIUI’s fame that Xiaomi was able to launch its first Mi and Redmi-branded smartphones, first in China and then internationally.

HyperOS Arrives

Things were going smoothly, but in October 2023 something changed: for months there was talk of the unheard-of MIUI 15 but in the end HyperOS 1 was announced, a new version of the UI. The need for a rebrand came with the expansion of Xiaomi’s ecosystem: MIUI was no longer enough to connect the over 200 device categories of the company, and thus work began on a new unified software.

From smartphones to tablets, Lei Jun’s company has moved into the IoT sector and even electric cars: at this point the brand needed a change also in its name.