Whenever Xiaomi announces a new smartphone, the biggest question that pops up is when will it be available for purchase in the US? And for the most part, the answer to the question is “it won’t”. Xiaomi has recently been expanding to more and more regions, but the US hasn’t been one of them, yet. However, when the company unveiled the Mi Note 2 last week in Beijing, something about the smartphone caught everyone’s eye. And that was the number of 4G LTE bands that are available on the Mi Note 2. There are 37 bands included and it supports all of the 4G LTE bands on T-Mobile and AT&T, but Xiaomi still has no plans to sell it in the US, officially. Making many people wonder why they went to the trouble of adding all of those bands to the device, if it won’t be in the US.
Well that’s because they are getting ready to enter the US market, but as Hugo Barra has said countless times before, they won’t enter until they are ready. And part of being “ready” is having their smartphones pass the carrier lab tests. As Engadget explains in their piece, the US carriers use bands that aren’t widely used in other parts of the world (this is why your phone from T-Mobile doesn’t work well in Europe, the Middle East or Asia), and the US carriers also have pretty tough tests for certification that every phone has to go through. Xiaomi, has already begun testing their phones in the US. Now they didn’t mention how far along they are in these tests, nor how the tests are going.
Since Barra joined the company three years ago, he has taken them internationally, expanding outside of China and making an even bigger name for themselves. But they are still absent from the US. Barra says it may take another year or two before they officially launch their smartphones in the US. But they are coming Stateside at some point. This year, the company made a special version of the Mi 5 which worked in the US, and began testing it here. Now with the global edition of the Mi Note 2, that one will likely be in testing in the US as well. Barra mentioned that this is another small step towards them launching all of their products into the US in the near future.