Xiaomi is soon going to get rid of some of its annoying ads on its Android skin, MIUI. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer defends its decision to include the ads saying so as to support the development of its apps. Mr. Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s CEO recently announced that the company will ditch some of the ads.
In the statement posted on Weibo via Mr. Wang Teng Thomas account, the company’s Product Director, Xiaomi says they’ll get rid of the vulgar ads that are negatively affecting the user experience. It will remove not all of the ads but some of them.
In the same post, Xiaomi selected six features from a feedback sesh which it plans to implement for its future devices including:
- New Notification box with custom filters and notifications that are not read for 12-hours are added to the notification box storage. They will not be cleared with on-click cleaning and users will also be able to browse and clear them later.
- Ultimate Power Saving mode to let users only use SMS and Phone.
- Local recycle bin for SMS, Photos, Documents plus other files that get deleted automatically after 3 days.
- Magnifying glass triggered by shortcut key to help users zoom into a picture or text.
- Curriculum viewing and alerting in a calendar for the schedule of different events in a day.
- Support for WeChat / QQ call recording.
Xiaomi consumers can then vote on the three features they wish to be prioritized for development and enrollment. It is, however, not clear if these features will roll out to the Global ROM or if they developed for MIUI 10 or 11 but presumably the latter that began development early this year. There’s no timeline for the betas rollout.
Where Xiaomi is at with the Ads
On Weibo, Xiaomi stated via a MIUI Experience Product Director that they have already reduced the number of places where ads are shows and that they’ll continue on that path for the next two months. Xiaomi will ensure that vulgar ads are not shown to users especially in the notification. The MIUI browser will also show fewer ads in the coming months too.
Users will also have the ability to suspend or close the ads. The advertisement controls will be much easier to find on the MIUI system apps and settings.
In other Xiaomi news
Xiaomi recently announced that they will stop developing MIUI betas for Redmi, its budget line range of smartphones. The company said that from July 5th they’ll start restricting betas to smartphones which are less than a year old although it did not specify which devices. This will likely affect the Redmi 7A and the Redmi 7 devices.
Its other updates excluding Android Pie will continue rolling out to entry-level devices – Xiaomi had earlier this year cancelled rolling out Android Pie updates to the entry-level devices.
Redmi is also shifting to other pocket-friendly flagships such as the Redmi K20.
