Xiaomi has officially announced the Mi Watch today at an event in Beijing, China. This marks the first true smartwatch from the company, after launching four successive generations of the fitness-centric Mi Band series since 2014. Xiaomi’s first real smartwatch is special not just because it’s feature-rich, but also because the company has a reputation of shaking-up every industry that it enters.

Xiaomi Mi Watch Is A Cheaper Apple Watch

Xiaomi has shamelessly copied the Apple Watch for the Mi Watch’s design and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Apple Watch is one of the best smartwatches available in the market today and taking inspiration from the best is always a good sign. But I just wish it wasn’t an exact replica of the Apple Watch, especially since Xiaomi has released a number of original designs in the past, including the Mi Mix Alpha and the original Mi Mix.

Now that we have established that the Mi Watch design isn’t original, let’s take a closer look at its body. The smartwatch comes with a square touchscreen display protected by sapphire Corning gorilla glass 3. The watch features a 1.78-inch AMOLED curved display with 326 PPI. The back of the watch is made out of ceramic.

There’s a crown on the right that can be used to navigate through the watch UI. Apart from the crown, there’s a multi-purpose button as well as a microphone on the right side. On the left, you have another microphone hole along with a speaker vent. The Mi Watch features an aluminum alloy body with a matte finish, but it has sharper curves than the Apple Watch. At the bottom, you’ll see the pins for the charging dock and the heart rate monitor.

Coming to the strap, Xiaomi is offering removable straps made out of fluoro rubber which is skin-friendly and anti-allergic. There are multiple color options including white, blue, silver, and black. Note that the strap buckle comes with the MI branding in a metallic black shade.

Xiaomi Mi Watch is the first to use the SD3100 4G chip

Inside, the Xiaomi Mi Watch comes with the Snapdragon Wear 3100 4G chipset featuring four Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.2GHz. The company is calling it the first wearable with Snapdragon 3100 4G, probably because the Fossil Gen 5 watches with Snapdragon 3100 didn’t have cellular connectivity.

One of the highlights of the Mi Smartwatch is its battery. The watch features one of the biggest batteries ever seen on a smartwatch featuring 570mAh in capacity. In comparison, watches like the 46mm Huawei Watch GT 2, the Galaxy Watch Active 2 (44mm), or even the Apple Watch 5 come with just 455mAh, 340mAh, and 296mAh batteries respectively. The company claims the Mi Watch can last up to 36 hours or up to two days on a single charge.

The Xiaomi smartwatch will be loaded with features such as NFC, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi (n), GPS, an independent vibration motor, and a pretty large speaker. Just like the top-end smartwatches of 2019, the Mi Watch also supports eSIM, which ensures you can connect to the internet via cellular network as well as make and receive calls independently.

Mi Watch is Powered By Google’s WearOS

In a surprise move, Xiaomi is adopting Google’s WearOS platform for its new smartwatch. However, like its smartphones, the WearOS running on the Xiaomi watch will be customized with its own MIUI for Watch skin. The company will offer a number of interesting watch faces for the watch. It also, unsurprisingly, comes integrated with Xiaomi’s own XiaoAI assistant.

Apart from the usual fitness-centric features found on a wearable, Xiaomi smartwatch supports heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen VO2 max sensor, sleep monitoring, and body energy monitoring. In one of the marketing videos, Xiaomi confirmed that the Mi Watch is safe for swimming as well.

Powered by the WearOS platform, the Xiaomi Mi watch comes with its own in-built app store that will offer 40+ optimized apps for the new watch. This includes popular Chinese apps like QQ, WeChat, and Keep (fitness). Thanks to NFC, the Mi Watch can also be used to make payments in China.

The Mi Watch is also capable of connecting to and controlling smart home appliances at your home.

Xiaomi Mi Watch Is Priced Aggressively

The Xiaomi Mi Watch is priced at 1299 yuan ($185 or Rs. 13,116) in China. The watch is up for reservations from 5 PM today (November 5) and will go on sale at 12 AM sharp on November 11th in China.

Just like the Mi CC9 Pro, there’s an exclusive edition that features a sapphire glass display with a polished stainless steel body and a stainless steel strap. The exclusive edition looks a lot more premium than the regular one and will retail for 1999 yuan ($285 or Rs. 20,184). The exclusive edition will go on sale in December 2019.

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