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Journalism of Courage
Xiaomi, which began as a modest custom ROM project in 2010, has now transformed into a global corporation with operations in over 100 countries. The company’s success was initially fueled by its budget smartphones. With a substantial influx of capital, the company figured that it could expand into other segments as well. Enter Xiaomi earphones, Xiaomi air purifiers, and more recently, the Xiaomi SU7 EV.
Xiaomi’s product ‘ecosystem’ is arguably more extensive than even Apple’s. While Xiaomi’s hardware has seen significant growth in recent years, its software needed to evolve to keep pace and connect these devices together. This is where HyperOS comes into play.
At its Xiaomi 14 launch event at MWC Barcelona, the company called HyperOS a ‘Human x Car x Home’ smart ecosystem, “a system with humans at the center.” That does give an idea of what the OS is about but doesn’t explain much.
In essence, HyperOS is a collective term that includes Xiaomi’s various operating systems across its entire ecosystem. This ranges from smartphones to smart home products, and even cars in the near future. As such, HyperOS comes pre-installed on some of its latest devices, including the Xiaomi 14 series and the Watch S3. Xiaomi wants to connect these devices with the HyperConnect framework, which it says is integrated across all devices.
Still, even though HyperOS is marketed as a unified entity, it is not a single operating system. Even Apple, known for its integrated ecosystem, does not use a single operating system across all its products, despite utilising a common framework.
For IoT products, HyperOS leverages the open-source Xiaomi Vela platform, which is based on the open-source RTOS/NuttX. For smartphones and tablets, HyperOS is built on AOSP. Given that MIUI also used AOSP, it’s not surprising to find that HyperOS bears similarities to MIUI, apart from a few UI modifications and the addition of generative AI features.
In its press release for HyperOS, Xiaomi mentions enhancements like extensive restructuring of technical modules such as the file system, memory management, and network system. Yet it fails to explain the technical details of how the update differs from MIUI beyond these few enhancements.
In our review of HyperOS, we noted how it enhances fluidity with new animations and features new icons and some UI tweaks. But besides this, it really isn’t all that different from MIUI. The mobile operating system, at least, has received more of a rebrand than a comprehensive rebuild.
Some of the enhanced fluidity can perhaps be attributed to Xiaomi’s optimization of OS storage, which brings down the space occupied by MIUI 14 from 12.53GB to just 9.14GB.
The OS also gets enhanced animations that you’ll notice across the operating system. Various elements across the UI have also been tweaked to look more vibrant and lively than before. But some bits – like the Control Center – have also gotten closer to iOS, which Xiaomi has been aping for a while now.
A few apps got redesigned too, like the Weather, Calculator, and File Manager apps. The Weather app has better readability and extra details like Real Feel now.
Xiaomi’s equivalent of Samsung’s Galaxy AI is Xiaomi HyperMind, which the company has described as the “central nexus of HyperOS.” However, the company wants to go more comprehensive with it. At the MWC keynote, one of the examples given for HyperMind was its integration into Xiaomi’s smart lighting devices that would automatically set different levels of brightness for different times of the day.
On smartphones, there are three main generative AI features:
AI Subtitles: This feature can generate video subtitles and translation, meeting subtitles with summaries, and real-time voice translation. However, the company hasn’t revealed what apps are supported.
AI Portrait: This feature allows you to submit a database of existing photos of yourself and anyone else. You can then submit a prompt to generate several images of that person.
AI Expansion: This feature works similarly to the Generative Expand feature on Photoshop. You can expand photos beyond their original bounds. Xiaomi says that this works using on-device computation.
At the moment, HyperOS is more of a vision that Xiaomi is working on. From the keynote, it becomes clear that the company wants all of its devices to intercommunicate intelligently and make smart decisions using artificial intelligence. But currently, it seems like the company is still laying down the groundwork for the operating system, and “smarter things are to come,” as Xiaomi put it in the keynote.
