I have blogged a couple of times about CyanogenMod, a custom ROM for Android devices whose developer has just been hired by Samsung. Well this is not the only high profile custom ROM available for multiple Android devices – MIUI is the other big gun in the game.
MIUI (pronounced me you I) is a highly customisable UI placed on top of the Android software. It is a UI that has been developed by Chinese developer base and looks very similar to a certain Apple OS in its natural form. Not only is it an overlay, but MIUI comes with some well developed applications preinstalled, for example their music player and weather app.
So why have I given a rundown of this custom Android software? The reason for it is that MIUI has been paired with its very own handset the ‘Xiaomi Phone’, and what a handset it is.
A Qualcomm 8260 Snapdragon chipset with a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU is lurking under the hood with Adreno 220 graphics and 1GB of RAM. The battery also packs plenty of juice, 1930mAh to be precise, enough to get you through 2 days of ‘real life use’ (real real life Xiaomi say).
The screen is a 4″ LCD made by Sharp with a FWVGA resolution (480 x 854 pixels). The phone measures 125mm x 63mm x 11.9mm, weighing 149g. It packs a dual GSM/3G antenna to avoid any embarrassing death grip issues.
The specs keep going: An 8-megapixel main camera, customisable MI button, both A-GPS and Glonass (The Russian alternative to GPS), Wi-Fi b/g/n, 4GB ROM, microSD card slot for cards up to 32GB and interchangeable back covers (7 available at launch with more to come).
The OS is based on Android 2.3.5 and packs deep modifications courtesy of the MIUI software.
This is the first time a Custom made ROM has had its own dedicated smartphone specifically for use with the software. The phone is made by Foxconn (yes, that Foxconn that makes Apple’s iPhone) and is going to sell at $310 – pre-orders start on 29th August and will be delivered in October.
There will be a 1.2GHz version that will reportedly be even cheaper than $310 (we don’t know how much though).