At Xiaomi World we have told you about dozens or even hundreds of mobile phones that the brand has launched in recent years, but to know where we are going we must always remember where we come from. Without a doubt, the Xiaomi Mi 1 was a terminal that changed the history of the company forever, a device that It was launched in China on August 16, 2011 and that undoubtedly laid the foundation for what Xiaomi is today.
At that time, large companies such as Samsung, Apple and Motorola dominated the telephone market in Europe with an iron fist Xiaomi wasn’t even a remote threat. However, the Mi 1 attracted worldwide attention due to its features at a completely groundbreaking price, and there were many examples that left Asia and were imported to many other countries.
Compact, the best of Qualcomm, a ridiculous price compared to the competition
According to the words of Lei Jun himself, one of the founders of Xiaomi and current CEO of the brand, this smartphone was created under a design idea called “no design” with a clear inspiration from what Steve Jobs was doing across the pond with the iPhone, that is, minimalism and functionality became more important than form.
With dimensions of 125 × 63 × 11.9 millimeters and a weight of 149 grams, the Xiaomi Mi 1 was by no means surprising with its exquisite construction, as the construction materials used were not very carefully processed plastics. What surprised many was that the panel used was a 4-inch screen with technology Transflective LCD signed by Sharp and a resolution of 854×480 pixels, something unusual in its price range.
And what we couldn’t find for just under 250 euros in return was hardware on par with the best terminals on the market. Inside this Xiaomi Mi 1 we found a Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 processor 1.5GHz dual-core with 1GB RAM and 4GB storage ridiculous numbers today, but back then they were up to date.
Finally, we must not forget the cornerstone of this device: MIUI. This software was released on August 16, 2010 i.e a year before the presentation of this Xiaomi Mi 1 and in fact it wasn’t until a year later that we finally got to see it on a natively installed terminal.
MIUI stood out for incorporating numerous changes compared to Android 2.1 Eclair in terms of system customization, a basis on which MIUI 14 is still based today. However, many users did not trust it as it required the installation of a third-party ROM until the Xiaomi Mi 1 was introduced The final boom of this level of individualization did not materialize.
Since then, we know more than enough about the history, but there is no doubt that this device set a precedent in the Android phone market. Today There’s no point in using a Mi 1 other than as a pure collector’s item. but it’s always good to remember how a Chinese brand that few users knew about at the time turned an entire industry on its head.
