Xiaomi has been the leading smartphone manufacturer in China for quite some time now. The company is constantly battling Huawei for the number 1 spot, but they’re doing a good job thus far. This China-based company had released a number of smartphones this year already, but they’re not only into manufacturing smartphones and various other smart gadgets, they’re also developing their very own software solution, an Android ROM called MIUI. The latest variant of this ROM is MIUI 8, and it had been announced back in May along with the Mi Max phablet.
That being said, the MIUI 8 stable version is still not available for devices out there, but it will be soon. Anyhow, there are two versions of MIUI 8 currently being developed, the Chinese and international variants. The international variant of this ROM was introduced quite recently actually, during Mi Max’s announcement in India. Now, these two variants of the ROM are quite different, the Chinese version is adapted to the Chinese market, it comes with a number of pre-installed apps, and unfortunately ads. Advertisements are baked into the OS by Xiaomi, and consumers in China have been complaining about ads in MIUI 7 for quite some time now. Luckily for them, the company’s CEO recently stated that MIUI 8 will contain fewer ads than the MIUI 7, but it seems like the latest test version still contains way too many ads. MIUI 8 testers have shared their concerns with the company, and considering that the stable version is due to roll out in August, this is quite concerning.
Beta testers did admit that MIUI 8 does contain less ads than MIUI 7, but the fact that they pop up when you least expect them to and mess with your usage of the device is quite irritating. Ads are baked into some system apps, like the File Explorer, for example. We do hope that Xiaomi will tone down on advertisements in the final version of MIUI 8, but we’ll see what happens once the company starts seeding this update to Chinese consumers. In related news, MIUI 7.5 is currently rolling out to a number of Xiaomi-branded devices, and should keep you busy until MIUI 8 comes along.