Xiaomi might not be a household name outside of China, but in the right circles it’s brand name that is carrying more and more weight all of the time. After all, there are few other smartphone manufacturers out there that could put something like the Mi MIX together. In China, the firm is so much more than just a smartphone brand, and while they produce their own line of routers, as well as TVs and a whole range of accessories, they also invest in other companies, too. One of those companies is Yi, a firm that’s responsible for the Yeelight line of smart lighting products.
Together the two firms have gone ahead and launched a new ceiling lamp, that, with a remote as well as a smartphone app that connects to your home WiFi, makes it easier than ever to turn on your lights, as well as control the lighting, too. Said Yeelight lamp is rated for 25,000 hours of run time, and there’s a myriad of different colors users can experiment with in the smartphone app, thanks to a range of almost a hundred LEDs found within the lamp. With a pre-order price of 249 Yuan ($35) it’s available to pre-order via Xiaomi’s crowdfunding website, which is something else the Chinese firm does that few others around the world have experimented with. The company says that the lamp will take just 5 minutes to install, and that it is resistant to dust by design, too.
Perhaps more exciting is that another of Xiaomi’s sub-brands, dubbed MIJIA, is looking to launch their first Electric Vehicle on Monday. It’s unclear as to whether or not this is going to be an electronic car or a bike at this point, but given that the teasers on social media have included regenerative braking and perforated brake discs as we’ve seen in other EV cars, it would make sense that the firms were readying a car, more than they were a bike. Regardless, we should know more come Monday, and whether or not this appears to be more of a gimmick than something practical is, of course, going to be debatable.