The leading smartphone company, Xiaomi launched its first-ever smartwatch with Mi branding – Mi Watch alongside the brand new Mi CC9 Pro. Xiaomi has a long experience in the fitness band but for the smartwatch, this is the first time they are trying. The newly launched Mi Watch is an Apple Watch clone, but the design is notably the only thing that looks similar to the Apple watch here.
Mi Watch Overview
The Mi Watch packs a 1.78-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 368 x 448 pixels and offers 326 PPI of pixel density. The smartwatch comes packed with numerous intelligent as well as fitness features. The device enables the users to read messages and emails comfortably and also has fitness features like – steps tracking and running distance. Xiaomi went with a rectangular design with the watch rater than popular circular design and they have three reasons for it. First: Better Space Utilization, Second: Better for reading and the Third: Better Navigation.
While talking about the performance of the device, you won’t get a good chipset, a good OS, good battery life, good haptics, or a good app ecosystem but still, it is a lot more affordable than the competition. The device is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 3100 and runs on Wear OS. The combination that doesn’t look better as Qualcomm has been neglecting the smartwatch market.
The Snapdragon Wear 3100 features a quad-core, 1.2GHz Cortex A7 CPU. This CPU was first introduced in 2011 and still hitting the market. As far as memory is concerned, the watch comes coupled with 8GB for internal storage and 1GB of RAM. The watch supports 4G LTE with eSIM for standalone connection.
As every smartwatch manufacturers are going with rectangular watch face but Xiaomi believes that rectangular is better than circular. They said that a rectangular screen offers a better reading experience to the users. The circular watch face doesn’t show texts properly and makes it hard for users to read it.
The company also believes that a rectangular display smartwatch is better and user-friendly at navigation. Xiaomi says that with a rectangular dial the screen of the Mi Watch offers comprehensive navigation experience to the users. The company also emphasizes that the Mi Watch lets users navigate effortlessly from side to side — sideways, upwards, or downwards.
Mi Watch Price and Availability
As for availability, the Mi Watch is available exclusively in China at the moment. There is no news regarding the availability of watches internationally. The watch will hit the Chinese market on November 11. While it comes to the price, the device is priced at CNY 1,299 which we can expect at NPR. 25,000 if it ever lands here.
Furthermore, there’s also a Premium Edition Mi Watch which comes with a sapphire crystal screen, stainless steel frame and band. That one will retail for CNY 1,999 (NPR 30,000) and is expected to be available this December.