MIUI 9 will start rolling out to users on August 11, Xiaomi confirmed at its Beijing-based product event earlier today during which the company officially announced the latest version of its proprietary mobile user interface, in addition to debuting the Mi 5X and Mi AI Speaker. MIUI 9 will first roll out to the Xiaomi Mi 6, Note 4X, and the Mi 5X, the phone maker said, with the latter model likely hitting the market on the same date seeing how it’s expected to run Android 7.1.1 Nougat with MIUI 9 out of the box. Following the initial launch, MIUI 9 will make its way to the Mi MIX, Mi Note, Mi Note 2, and the entire range of the Mi 5 and Mi 4-series smartphones on August 25, the Chinese original equipment manufacturer (OEM) confirmed.
The latest iteration of MIUI will eventually be launched on all Xiaomi-made smartphones in September, according to the company’s representatives who didn’t provide a more precise time frame for that particular rollout, only adding that the original Mi 1, Mi 1S, and the Mi 2A will be the only models that won’t receive the new software, presumably due to their hardware limitations. Before the official release of the new version of MIUI, Xiaomi will launch a developer preview of the OS tomorrow, distributing experimental builds for the Mi 6 and Redmi Note 4X, the company said. The builds are aimed at developers looking to optimize their apps for the software suite, though it’s currently unclear whether additional preview versions for other devices that are set to receive MIUI 9 will be distributed in the coming days. All of the aforementioned dates only pertain to the Chinese version of the ROM that’s set to be released in Xiaomi’s home country, though the international variant of the software presumably won’t be far behind and will debut by early fall.
MIUI 9 was announced as a significant upgrade over its predecessor, boasting a new Smart App Launcher, robust image search engine, and a number of performance tweaks and optimizations meant to improve the overall user experience of the software. The ROM will also ship with a new digital assistant that will help you navigate the contents of your device and is expected to do a better job at allocating hardware resources than MIUI 8.