Xiaomi Mi Watch goes official with MIUI-skinned Wear OS

Alongside the brand new Mi CC9 Pro, Xiaomi also unveiled its Mi Watch – the first smartwatch to bear the Mi branding. It brings some serious features so much so that Xiaomi is marketing the devices as a “small phone on your wrist”.

The watch comes with a 1.78-inch AMOLED screen with always-on capabilities housed in a 44mm casing. The back is made from ceramic and there is a single button and crown on the right-hand side that are used to operate the interface. The left houses a single speaker and microphone. There’s also Bluetooth, NFC and eSIM support which allow the smartwatch to function completely autonomously.

The Mi Watch runs on Xiaomi’s MIUI for watch on top of Google’s Wear OS – the first customized version of the Google smartwatch platform to date. MIUI for watch has 40+ built-in apps and a separate app store that is now open for third-party developers. It also brings all the usual fitness tracking features including swim tracking and is compatible with Firstbeat’s performance analytics which gives you a detailed breakdown of your heart rate data based on different exercises.

Under the hood, we have the Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset paired with 1 GB RAM and 8GB storage. Battery life is rated at up to 36 hours of continuous use with 4G turned on. Xiaomi used a 570 mAh battery inside the MI Watch, which is the biggest cell ever put in a smartwatch.

For now, the Mi Wach will remain exclusive to China and there’s no word on international availability. It’s scheduled to hit the Chinese market on November 11 and will retail for CNY 1,299 ($185).

There’s also a Premium Edition Mi Watch which comes with a sapphire crystal screen, stainless steel frame and band. That one will go for CNY 1,999 ($285) and is expected to come out before the end of the year.