Xiaomi prepares to add document and ID card scanning, video tags, and HEIC support to MIUI 11’s Camera

Back in September this year, Xiaomi first unveiled MIUI 11 at a launch event in China. The company’s updated Android skin introduced a ton of new features and visual improvements, including a completely redesigned UI, new font, updated Always-On Display, and more. While Xiaomi has already rolled out a stable version of MIUI 11 to a number of Xiaomi and Redmi devices, it seems like the company plans to introduce even more new features to the software.

MIUI 11 nightlies from the last couple of weeks contain evidence of several new features for the MIUI camera app that are currently in development. Here’s a brief rundown of all the new features we’ve managed to unearth:

Video Tagging

Strings of code in a recent MIUI 11 nightly hint at a feature called “Video Tagging” (translated) that will allow you to set a bookmark while recording a video. Upon playing the recorded video in the gallery app (presumably, only the stock MIUI Gallery app) you’ll get the option to skip directly to the bookmark. This new feature could come in handy while recording lectures/interviews as it will let you tag specific parts of the recording for easier editing later on. The description for this feature reads “click ‘mark’ in the video, you can check the mark position during playback” (translated).

Document and ID Card Scanning

Xiaomi is also prepping up to add a document and ID card scanner to the MIUI camera app that will allow you to scan various documents. The new “document mode” will let you save images in black and white or “strengthen” them, in a bid to make the text more legible. A separate “ID Copy Mode” has also been discovered which is designed specifically to scan ID cards. The mode includes support for double-sided shooting and it can create a 1:1 copy of an A4 ID card.

HEIC Support

The MIUI camera app will also get support for HEIF/HEIC file formats for images. The high-efficiency file format has been designed to drastically reduce the size of images, when compared to PNG or JPG formats, without losing much detail and it will let you store more images in the same amount of space. You will get the option to choose the format preference within the camera settings and the option will be titled “HEIC Format”. The description for the new setting reads “Capture photos in high-efficiency HEIF format.”

As of now, we have no information on when these features will go live in the MIUI 11 Camera app. However, since the code has already started appearing in the nightlies, it shouldn’t be long before we see the features in action in a beta release.