Tag Archives: xiaomi

Xiaomi Wearable Wrist Speaker Concept is a crazy wearable audio device that lets you ‘feel’ the music

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[The designer of this product is of Ukrainian origin. YD is sharing work from Ukrainian designers/students in the hopes of amplifying their talent and giving them a global platform.]

No, this isn’t a fan-made arc repulsor from Iron Man, although you wouldn’t be the first one to mistake it for one. Instead, it’s a refreshingly new speaker concept that merges sound and sapien together to create an experience absolutely new. The Xiaomi Wearable Speaker is a conceptual Bluetooth audio device that’s designed to sit on your wrist. Instead of making you just hear the audio by putting headphones in your ears, the Xiaomi Wireless Wrist Speaker makes you hear and FEEL audio because the speaker is quite literally strapped to your body. The sound travels through your ears, and the speaker’s vibrations traverse through your body, sort of mimicking the effect of being at a concert, where the music actually goes through your body, immersing you deeply.

[Follow Ivan Zhurba on Instagram]

Designer: Ivan Zhurba

Unlike your average speaker, the Xiaomi Wireless Wrist Speaker has a unique design that makes it especially effective as a wearable. For starters, the speaker unit features multiple double-sided drivers that vibrate both outwards and inwards, sending the thumping audio into the air, but also into your body. The wrist-worn wearable has a one-size-fits-all design, with an inflatable inner layer that tightens around your forearm (sort of like inflatable arm-bands that kids wear while swimming). The tubular design of the wearable allows the drivers to sit on one side, with a 14000mAh battery pack on the other side, powering the speaker for long listening sessions.

The idea of a wearable speaker isn’t entirely new. Companies have experimented with subwoofer jackets that basically send audio right through your body in the form of haptics, allowing you to experience sound on an audio-physical level. To an extent, bone-conducting headphones do the same thing, transmitting vibrations to the auditory nerve through the bone right in front of your ear. Zhurba’s concept builds on the same strategy and the underlying philosophy of allowing people to ‘feel’ music – something Zhurba suggests would be wonderful while meditating, exercising, running, or even riding a cycle or motorbike!

Zhurba’s design exists as just a concept for now, with the use of the Xiaomi branding being purely representational. “My vision of the design is similar with the company’s philosophy”, he mentions. The speaker, however, is patent-pending and Zhurba is currently looking for people to help finance its production. You can reach out to him via email, or through his Instagram.

The post Xiaomi Wearable Wrist Speaker Concept is a crazy wearable audio device that lets you ‘feel’ the music first appeared on Yanko Design.

The wide-angled action camera just got a pretty impressive 360° makeover with this Xiaomi concept

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Designed to rival the GoPro, the Insta360, and the newly launched (and highly impressive) DJI Action Cam 2, this sweet little number comes with the Xiaomi brand name emblazoned on it, although it’s just a concept from the mind of Michal Dufka, a budding concept artist and designer based out of Prague.

Titled the Xiaomi Mi Action 360, the camera is a compact device no larger than most action cameras… although it does have a key difference – it comes with a swiveling wide-angle lens that turns regular photos into immersive 360° panoramic shots, allowing you to capture much more than you could with just a generic action cam.

While DJI’s Action Cam 2 focused on ease of use and an abundance of feature-rich modules to make capturing simpler on land and at sea, the Mi Action 360’s design brief is simple – “Capture Everything”. With what looks a lot like an eyeball that independently moves to scan the surroundings, the camera’s movable lens turns photos into panoramas, and lets you easily take panning shots while recording video. The eyeball-shaped lens sits within a rectangular camera body, which comes with a simplified interface with just two buttons, and a small display that acts as a viewfinder while also giving you details about your capturing conditions and quality. The display comes touch-enabled too, allowing you to toggle shooting modes, letting you control the rotation of the camera lens either pre-capture or during capture.

The Mi Action 360 overall champions a rather ‘less is more’ aesthetic. The two-button interface aside the camera’s body also has a battery level indicator, an in-built microphone, and two tripod mounts that let you hook your action camera onto tripods, selfie sticks, or a host of other mount-compatible accessories. It doesn’t match up to the DJI Action Cam’s magnetic mounting system, which I’ve declared my love for pretty publicly. That being said, the Mi Action 360’s core capabilities are entirely different, and judging by the size of the lens, this little bad boy should quite easily be able to capture 360° HDRI images in 4K, which would make for great immersive VR content. It’s a shame this camera’s just a concept… although here’s hoping that an exec at Xiaomi sees this design.

Designer: Michal Dufka

The post The wide-angled action camera just got a pretty impressive 360° makeover with this Xiaomi concept first appeared on Yanko Design.

Xiaomi just announced its Augmented Reality Smart Glasses… and the timing couldn’t be more interesting!

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Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Xiaomi would randomly drop such a massive product teaser just a day before Apple’s September event? And hold their own even a day AFTER Apple announced the new iPhone? I’m not an expert analyst, but it seems like they’re trying to beat Apple to the punch, given that a lot of people are expecting Apple to launch their own smart glasses soon. The announcement a day before and the event a day after Apple’s California Streaming event is just Xiaomi’s way of rolling its sleeves up and trying to grab the news cycle by its horns before Apple floods the internet. Moreover, the Smart Glasses also end up firing shots at Facebook, who just announced their own camera-enabled wayfarers with RayBan. Gossip and speculation aside, here’s what the Xiaomi Smart Glasses are all about.

Designed to look like a regular pair of eyewear, Xiaomi’s Smart Glasses actually come with a holographic display built into them. The tiny MicroLED display (which Xiaomi says is smaller than a grain of rice) is built into the temple stem, and reflects a simple UI onto the right eyepiece of the glasses. The specially crafted eyepiece uses a series of microscopic “optical waveguides” to project the display into your eye, allowing only you to see the augmented reality elements when you wear the glasses.

The Smart Glasses come with a rather bare-basics interface, although it’s still incredibly advanced for its time (not to mention the fact that Xiaomi managed to fit all this technology into a ridiculously slim piece of eyewear). The holographic display can display messages, alerts, notifications, and time, although Xiaomi’s most impressive flex was showcasing a live translate feature, that took an English food menu and overlaid the Chinese translations on top of it. Aside from the MicroLED holographic display, the Smart Glasses also come with a camera lens that captures the world around you, allowing you to not just take pictures, but also analyze images and text. Whether all that live translation and processing power happens within the spectacles themselves is yet to be determined, although we can expect much more information on the 15th, when Xiaomi holds its product event.

For now, the Smart Glasses are just a concept teaser with no price, no tech specs, and no foreseeable launch date.

The viral Xiaomi robotic dog posed to be an affordable challenge to Boston Dynamic’s Spot just released new images + sketches!

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Quadruped robots hit the scene in 1976 and since then, they’ve been used for everything from unsafe forensic and governmental tasks such as bomb-sniffing and mine surveying to clinical tasks like connecting with patients to provide remote medical attention.

Quadruped technology is the talk of the robotics world. Four-legged robots are relied on by industries across the world for tasks that require a stable walking gait and agile mobility. Xiaomi, a Chinese tech company, recently unveiled more 3D renders of their own Quadruped robotic creation, CyberDog.

Currently, the bio-inspired, four-legged robot has been engineered as a robotic companion whose future technical capabilities are still in development. In a recent press release from Xiaomi, it’s said that CyberDog comes complete with “AI interactive cameras [and sensors], binocular ultra-wide-angle fisheye cameras, and Intel ® RealSense™ D450 Depth module, and can be trained with its computer vision algorithm.”

CyberDog’s external interface features an array of camera sensors. CyberDog’s involved vision sensor system allows the robot to carve out its own navigational map and analyze its surrounding environment in real-time, allowing it to look toward a destination and avoid physical barriers on the way. Currently, CyberDog’s integrated software allows the quadruped robotic companion to operate like a real dog.

Inspired by the pet-like nature of canines, CyberDog also features built-in smart technology that allows posture and facial recognition, which means CyberDog can even follow its owner around like a real dog. Xiaomi filled CyberDog with 11 high-precision sensors that allow the robot to register, analyze, and interact with its surrounding environment. With a maximum torque output and rotation speed up to 32N·m/220Rpm, CyberDog can move at speeds up to 3.2 m/s.

Syberdog also comes with 3 type-C ports and 1 HDMI port so users can attach hardware add-ons, Xiaomi describes, “be it a search light, panoramic camera, motion camera, LiDAR, or more.” In addition to its integrated biometric technology, CyberDog responds to voice commands like assigning tasks or operation control. Alternatively, users can manage CyberDog’s movement and direction via accompanying remote control or smartphone applications.

Expanding on CyberDog’s technical and managerial potential, a “rich external interface” includes 3 type-C ports and 1 HDMI port, allowing users to attach hardware add-ons or software systems to make acute improvements to CyberDog’s existing technology. On CyberDog’s ability to register commands, Xiaomi notes, “CyberDog can be called on for the most unique tasks, and the ways in which it can be interacted with holds unforetold possibilities.”

Designer: Xiaomi

Rubber bottomed feet allow CyberDog to move around rugged terrain and indoor settings alike.

Hinged limbs allow CyberDog to move just like a canine animal.

CyberDog can even do push-ups. Only half-kidding. It can do push-ups, thanks to its 220 rpm32N-m maximum torque.

Soft rubber bottoms allow for soft and nimble treading.

11 high-precision sensors fill out CyberDog’s internal wiring that give CyberDog the power to understand, analyze, and interact with its environment.

CyberDog comes equipped with voice command technology and facial recognition software so it can follow humans around and respond to tasks like a real canine might.

CyberDog can conduct high-speed movements up to 3.2 m/s.

This Xiaomi Smartphone perfectly matches their “Alive” philosophy with its minimal form

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When one looks back at the evolution of smartphones, we’ve come a long way in terms of hardware and design. Right from the walkie-talkie-like design to the current day bezel-less form factor. Talk of the hardware – and it has been a technological revolution – literally bringing the computing power of a PC to the handheld gadget. According to Statista, the number of smartphone users worldwide has crossed three billion and is estimated to grow by several hundred million in the next few years. That’s approximately 35 percent of the total world population who have access to this ground-breaking piece of technology. While tech giants are exploring the realms of foldable and retractable smartphone designs, simplicity is something that suffices our daily needs.

Industrial designer Yifan Hu has come up with the Xiaomi Mi phone of the future inspired by the brand’s latest venture into the “Alive” branding identity announced in March 2021. The new dynamic logo designed by a world-renowned designer, professor of Musashino Art University, and the President of the Nippon Design Center (NDC), Kenya HARA. The contoured corners of the logo are created using superellipse mathematical formula are aesthetically pleasing, and so is the smartphone concept designed by Yifan. This Mi phone results from the perfect balance between a square and circle shape – the very essence of Xiaomi’s brand identity going forward.

The phone follows the “Alive” philosophy to the core to signifying a profoundly active life. Have a closer look at the rounded body frame and the contoured camera module housing. Even the phone profile toggling button carries the same theme for visual uniformity. The device is pretty thin and looks ergonomically balanced to hold for the feel-good factor. Quite aptly, the new “Alive” themed logo on the back perfectly matches the overall design of the concept smartphone. Yifan imagines the device in wantable colors, including coral green, see blue, peppy orange, off white, and grey. So, would you want one of these phones in the palm of your hand? I surely would not mind having one – the current designs have got so monotonous, haven’t they?

Designer: Yifan Hu

Xiaomi tries building what Google and Motorola couldn’t – the modular smartphone

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The modular smartphone still remains an elusive pipe dream, nearly a decade after the Phonebloks surfaced on the internet. Google tried it, Motorola managed to execute a strange version of it with the Moto Mods, and every company that considered it eventually abandoned it because it was a logistical nightmare with very little net positive benefit. It’s safe to say Xiaomi isn’t ‘every company’. The Chinese giant’s company’s name loosely translates to ‘little grain’, and it talks about a philosophy of building a lot from a little. This means they’re not averse to taking risks, and they’ve definitely surprised before, with their phones like the Mi MIX 2 that was designed by Philippe Starck, the Mi TV LUX, a transparent television, and even their latest bit of innovation in the Mi MIX Fold, with its liquid camera lens. According to LetsGoDigital, it seems like the company is also trying its hand out at designing the modular smartphone by splitting the device into four distinct parts – the screen, the camera, the battery+pcb, and the speakers.

LetsGoDigital uncovered the patent on the 26th of April, and partnered with Jermaine Smit (aka Concept Creator) to bring the patent drawings to life. The phone’s components attach to one another using sliding dovetail joinery, with contact points that allow for communication between modules. Finally, a primary screen snaps on the front, hiding the crease-lines and providing a large, bezel-less display. The three modules play a rather interesting role when combined together. The upper module houses the camera, but also contains the phone’s motherboard. The central module houses the battery, while the third contains the speaker along with the phone’s charging port. Conceptually, the modules would be interchangeable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to switch the phone off prior to swapping parts.

Jermaine Smit’s camera modules give this conceptual Xiaomi smartphone a variety of features, including camera modules with different capabilities. The different modules have anywhere from a 3-4 lens setup, with one of the higher-end ones even coming with its own backward-facing display that’s emblematic of the Mi 11 Ultra that released earlier this year. Unlike the Ultra, which had a tiny display, this concept’s display is a respectable 2-inches diagonally. I’d assume it would be big enough to use as a viewfinder for selfies (given that the phone doesn’t have a front-facing camera) and even for notifications.

Although this concept, and Xiaomi’s patent, unlocks some pretty interesting possibilities, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Not many of these patents really make it to a public reveal or to a retail outlet, but instead, aim at protecting a company’s intellectual property and research. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Xiaomi just announced it as a one-off concept to show that their tech isn’t just a dream, it works in reality too. Until then, all we have are these (pretty intriguing) renders!

Designer: Jermaine Smit for LetsGoDigital

Image Credits: LetsGoDigital

Xiaomi’s new $59 Smart Clock is a super-affordable alternative to the Amazon Echo Show

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I wouldn’t be surprised if you mistook the Mi Smart Clock for an Amazon Echo Show from afar. They both share a pretty similar front-view, with a landscape display accompanied by a thick bezel. The only difference is that the $59 smart speaker/clock doesn’t come with a camera embedded within the bezel. At that price, I wouldn’t expect it to… more so considering it costs just $30 in Xiaomi’s home country, China.

I’d hate to really harp on its price (after all we’re a design site), but the price of the Xiaomi Mi Smart Clock is really a feature, given most regular smart speakers cost nearly double… multiply it by 4 if you’re adding a display too. The price aside, the Mi Smart Clock is a nifty little smart-speaker with Google Assistant built-in. The display on the clock is a high-quality 3.97-inch touchscreen running MIUI, and can be used either to display images and photos from your camera roll, or as a clock (with a variety of themes to choose from). Aside from these two functions, the Mi Smart Clock allows you to connect it to a host of IoT devices too, letting you monitor and control a variety of other smart devices around your house (like your home security cam or smart lights) simply by summoning Google Assistant. The display acts as a dashboard for notifications too, and thanks to built-in Chromecast, you can beam music, videos, and other content from your smartphone or tablet to your Mi Smart Clock’s display (potentially allowing your kids to watch cartoons without having to give your phone to them). Of course, the Mi Smart Clock works as a regular smart-speaker too, letting you do things you’d normally do with your Echo or Google Nest speaker like play music, narrate the news, or tell you the weather.

In a market saturated with smart speakers, Xiaomi manages to strut in rather comfortably, thanks to its brand recognition and that frankly unbeatable price. Although given that tag, you’d have to wonder where the compromise lies… is it in the lack of a camera? Or in the fact that the company access to all your data?

Designer: Xiaomi

This iPhone 13 concept sports a rear camera with a 3-inch display inspired by the Mi 11 Ultra

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PS Design’s iPhone 13 concept poses a pretty interesting question. Wouldn’t it be nice if your smartphone had a display on the rear that let you see what was in the frame while you clicked selfies? Sure, you’ve got the front-facing camera for selfies, but hear me out. With multiple cameras and sensors on the smartphone’s rear, one could argue that the front-facing camera is a bit of a qualitative compromise. Instead, put a tiny display on the rear and use it to click all sorts of incredible selfies, while being able to compose your shot the way you want to. It’s something Xiaomi is apparently trying out with the Mi 11 Ultra, and it’s also something most folding phones have attempted too. PS Design’s conceptual iPhone 13 sports a secondary rear display too, although it’s capable of doing a lot more than just letting you click better selfies.

A better way to describe PS Design’s iPhone 13 concept is to compare the rear display to Apple’s closest product – the Apple Watch. The 3-inch always-on rear display practically mirrors the watch’s capabilities, allowing you to see the time, notifications, and a wide variety of other data on it. The display on the rear uses Apple’s low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) technology to provide its always-on feature, and the fact that it sits right beside the main camera setup (and that it’s larger than the Mi 11 Ultra’s display), means the front of the phone can ditch the notch entirely, creating a beautifully bezel-less iPhone that leaves little to be desired.

Another feature on this conceptual device is its ceramic body… which does seem unusual for the iPhone line-up, but it borrows from Apple’s Watch series, offering high gloss, scratch-resistance, and the ability to hold onto color better (Apple’s red iPhones have shown the color fading over time). The white ceramic body does stand out well against the large black camera bump, almost making it look like the original Google Pixel smartphone (it’s a good look, tbh). Moreover, the large camera bump is coincidentally both wide and centrally aligned, which means the phone won’t rock when you place it on a flat surface… although, with that useful, always-on display on the back, you’re more likely to rest your phone with the camera bump facing upwards right at you!

Designer: PS Design

With its avant-garde design + 108MP camera, the Xiaomi Mi 11 directly challenges the iPhone 12 Pro

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Xiaomi was smart to center its smartphone innovation around the camera. Sure, the Mi 11 is the first phone to come with a Snapdragon 888 SoC, but the chipset isn’t as important as what it actually powers… an Android phone designed to be a cinematic behemoth that takes on the iPhone 12 Pro.

For long, the biggest comparison between Android and iOS devices has been the camera… specifically the still camera. Video has hands-down been Apple’s secret sauce all along, but the Mi 11 brings the fight to Apple with its 108MP Wide-Angle camera with optical image stabilization, a 13MP ultra-wide camera, 5MP ‘telemacro’ camera, and an incredible AI that works behind the scenes to make the Mi 11’s videos, as Xiaomi likes to say, ‘cinematic’. The AI powers the Mi 11’s low-light mode which can take underexposed videos and enhance them in realtime with a RAW-level AI. The AI even brings features like Magic Zoom (or the iconic Dolly Zoom effect seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo), along with Time Freeze and Freeze-Frame Videos, Time Lapse, along with a variety of cinematic filters that make your videos mimic the effect of being recorded using a professional setup, and an AI Erase 2.0 feature that lets you remove unwanted objects from your video.

As remarkable as Xiaomi touts its camera setup to be, it’s the screen that reinforces this. The Mi 11’s WQHD+ set 13 new records and received an A+ rating from DisplayMate. HDR10+ video recording and 10-bit color representation make everything you shoot look much more vivid, and color-accurate. With Super Resolution Technology, Xiaomi claims it can upscale older videos too, doubling their resolution to make pixelated videos clearer than before. The cherry on the cake is the speaker on the flagship smartphone, which comes powered by Harman Kardon, a partnership that helps enhance the acoustics of the dual speakers, providing exquisite and crisp high-end sound quality. This makes everything from video recording to video playback an experience that’s quite literally a class apart.

The flagship phone also comes with a flagship-worthy design. The Quad-curved display on the front allows the bezels to fade away into the background, creating an immersive experience that’s reinforced by Corning’s Gorilla® Glass Victus™. The back features 3D glass too, and is available in 3 standard colors, as well as a Xiaomi Signature rippled glass edition that explores light, shadow, and pearlescent reflections in an absolutely new way. The phone comes with WiFi 6 and support for 5G. It even packs 55W wired turbo-charging, 50W wireless turbo-charging, and 10W reverse wireless charging on the back, and an in-screen fingerprint sensor on the front that even functions as a heart-rate monitor… a first of its kind!

What really stands out is how the Mi 11 embodies everything that an iPhone-rivalling Android phone should be. It has a laser-like focus on on championing video with hardware as well as a powerful AI, but also nails other aspects with that gorgeous quad-curved WQHD+ screen, the Snapdragon 888 SoC, a rich speaker courtesy Harman Kardon, powerful wired AND wireless charging, support for 5G, and a heart-rate monitor integrated right into the smartphone… all wrapped in a sleek, curved, drop-dead gorgeous design that’s drop-resistant too, thanks to the Gorilla Glass Victus. Pre-orders for the Mi 11 begin on February 26 (followed by full-scale availability in March) with a base price of €749 ($903).

Designer: Xiaomi