Four years later, MIUI6 starts to reduce the size of Xiaomi

August 16th is Xiaomi's birthday. In the past four years, Xiaomi's voice has been growing, its user base has been increasing, its product types have been increasing, and its business scope has been expanding. While the Xiaomi empire is growing wildly, MIUI 6, which was released on its birthday, chose to do subtraction for Xiaomi.

Subtracting design to better present content

Most people who have come into contact with MIUI think that it looks good, with bright colors, a distinct interface, and a variety of themes. However, at the press conference on August 16, when MIUI director Hong Feng introduced the new MIUI 6, he repeatedly emphasized the design principle of "content is the essence." Based on this principle, after removing unnecessary decorative elements and interface impurities in the design, MIUI 6 has achieved a high degree of user focus on the content itself, rather than the process of obtaining content. This design style has greatly improved the efficiency of users obtaining content.

In addition to the flat design of icons and the extension of the contact, SMS and other interfaces to the edge of the screen to make the entire system look cleaner and neater, MIUI 6 also restructured the mobile phone notification system, making the notification interface that Android users are most troubled by become "well-behaved and smart".

MIUI 6 deconstructs the notification system into four levels: lock screen notification, status bar notification, notification bar notification, and desktop notification. MIUI 6 only displays important notifications in an aggregated manner on the lock screen interface, and unimportant notifications only appear in the pull-down notification bar. The status bar will display less important notifications, but in order not to disturb the user, these unimportant notifications are aggregated into three small dots "...". MIUI 6 also adds a complete icon corner system to prompt messages from various applications.

Subtract for the operation

Smartphones bring more practical functions to people, but also make the operation of mobile phones more complicated. In response to this situation, MIUI 6 has also made further optimizations in operation to reduce the burden of cumbersome operation of Android phones.

In order to solve the problems of finding apps and organizing icons, MIUI 6 has added an icon positioning function, which can not only search for icons, but also locate the icons, making it easier to remember and operate. After pinching the screen with two fingers to enter the desktop organization mode, MIUI 6 provides icon organization tools such as icon basket, grouping batch organization, and batch deletion. For example, in the grouping batch organization tool, after selecting a part of the icons to the icon basket, you can create a group by sliding on the edge of the icon basket. After dragging the grouped "basket" to the desktop position, you can fill in the blanks according to the specified position or fill in the blanks in sequence. Drag it to the top to delete in batches. This greatly reduces the operation time of users when organizing icons.

In response to the needs and preferences of female users, MIUI6 provides a more convenient way to configure emails, and provides more than 60,000 company and school configuration information in the cloud. Users only need to enter their emails and passwords to achieve intelligent configuration. MIUI 6 has added a lot of gesture operations to the camera application - swiping down switches the selfie camera, swiping right brings up the settings menu, swiping left activates the real-time filter, and after focusing, you can quickly adjust the manual exposure in the center of the screen. This makes the operation of emails and cameras more "idiot-proof" and reduces unnecessary operation steps for users in commonly used applications.

Reduce the burden on mobile phones

How to reduce the power consumption of mobile applications, how to reduce the memory usage, and how to optimize the driver performance have become the most concerned issues for smartphone users. In response to user needs, Hong Feng said that MIUI6 will optimize power, memory, download, and driver performance.

In terms of power consumption optimization, MIUI 6 manages self-starting applications on the one hand, and provides an intelligent power saving mode in the security center on the other hand, which actively saves power when the phone is low on battery or idle. This improves battery life and reduces power consumption by applications.

In order to reduce the memory usage of applications, MIUI 6 monitors the memory consumption of each application in real time and reclaims the memory of applications that exceed the actual memory required. At the same time, MIUI 6 distinguishes between foreground applications and background applications, compressing background applications in a very small space to ensure the smooth operation of foreground applications.

It's not just the phone that's 10 grams lighter

Hong Feng said at the press conference, "Many users who have used MIUI 6 have commented that MIUI 6 makes the phone at least 10 grams lighter, and it is lighter and smoother to use." As the operating system of Xiaomi products, if MIUI can make the phone 10 grams lighter, then all devices that can be connected to the phone installed with the MIUI system will have a chain reaction, making other products start to lose weight.

At the MIUI launch conference, Hong Feng spent some time emphasizing Xiaomi's cloud service. In fact, at this stage, various Internet companies are constantly strengthening the performance of their own cloud services, all for the purpose of connecting mobile phones, TVs, tablets and other devices, thereby building a "hardware + software + content" ecosystem.

According to reports, Xiaomi released its cloud service (Micloud) in 2012, which has covered a full range of services including contacts, text messages, call logs, photos, etc. For photo synchronization alone, 60,000 photos are uploaded to the MIUI cloud service every minute. MIUI 6 provides more comprehensive cloud services, including APP data backup, browser bookmarks, music playlists, and recorder data synchronization. MIUI 6 cloud service also supports cross-device use. For example, browser bookmarks, music playlists, and photo galleries can be seamlessly synchronized between mobile phones, tablets, TVs, and boxes. Xiaomi cloud service also supports i.mi.com web operations. Seamless synchronization of multiple terminals can reduce time and space restrictions to a minimum.

Whether MIUI has reduced the burden on Xiaomi will only be known after the end of 2014, when all of Xiaomi's mainstream models are equipped with MIUI 6. After all, users are still very strict in defining "good-looking and easy to use".

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.