Xiaomi ends MIUI 11 beta development in favor of MIUI 12

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Xiaomi’s MIUI beta ROMs play a vital role in letting the company prioritize the development of new features. Based on the feedback from beta testers, the MIUI team can choose which features will align more with user requirements than others and, therefore, require more efforts for development and evolution. Not only that, MIUI betas also give us hints about the features that may or may not make to final successive versions of the UI. Every year, the company splits efforts between betas and the next incremental update but this year seems different. With the objective of now focussing on MIUI 12, Xiaomi is halting the development of MIUI 11 China beta.

In a post on the China chapter of MIUI Community, an admin announced that the MIUI 11 China beta will be halted next week. The admin confirmed that MIUI 11 build no. 20.3.23 20.2.26 will be the last beta and there will be a break in development for a while. Many Chinese tech bloggers suspect this is an effort to focus on the development of MIUI 12.

Below is a screenshot of the announcement translated from Chinese to English using Google Translate. We regret any contextual errors due to the language barrier.

Xiaomi first introduced MIUI 11 in China back in September 2019 and it was followed by a global launch in India in October. In spite of a later launch than usual, the development of MIUI 11 had begun in as early as January 2019.

Last year, Xiaomi also suspended the roll-out of MIUI 11 global beta to focus on stable updates. The Chinese beta, however, had remained unaffected. But, over the past few months, Xiaomi has been pushing out stable MIUI 11 diligently and appears to focus on these updates as the company moves towards completing 10 years of operations.

As for MIUI 12, while there is no official word on the release date, the progress of development, or the features. The official MIUI account on Weibo did, however, release the official logo for MIUI 12 but much hasn’t come out since then. Although an alleged roadmap for the MIUI 12 release did surface a few weeks ago, claiming that the first Chinese beta based on Android 11 will go live in September, we can’t vouch for its credibility since the original poster was only a tech blogger and not someone working for Xiaomi.

We will keep you updated about the progress of MIUI 12 as and when we hear from official sources. x

Thanks to XDA Member kacskrz for the tip!

Update: It has been clarified to us that 26th March 2020 will be the last beta.