Xiaomi’s First Smartwatch Is A Blatant Apple Watch Clone
Xiaomi is launching a new smartwatch that, at a glance, looks familiar to anyone who has ever spied an Apple Watch, at least when looking at the press renders from a top-down view. When doing so, the new Mi Watch bears a striking resemblance to the Apple Watch, as you can see in the press render above. However, there are some key differences, at least.
Starting with the physical design, the Mi Watch offers the same look as the Apple Watch, with a rectangle face, rounded and beveled edges, and a turn dial that looks a lot like the digital crown at the same spot. And sitting below, we can see the button placement is the same as well.
Where things look slightly different to me is when viewing the actual Mi Watch from the side. Here's a teaser video of the Mi Watch shown at an angle...
To our eyes, the Mi Watch appears to have slightly less of a curvature on the side compared to the Apple Watch. It does not appear to be as rounded, though the difference is subtle for sure—even identical twins have minor characteristics that make them distinguishable from one another.
Physical design aside, the Mi Watch will debut with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 3100 system-on-chip (SoC) inside. Introduced last year, the 3100 is powered by a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor cluster that works in conjunction with an efficient DSP and an ultra-low power QCC1110 co-processor to handle less critical functions. Interestingly, the co-processor also features a deep learning engine.
The Mi Watch will also bring support for Near Field Communication (NFC), along with GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity—standard stuff for a modern smartwatch. On the software side, it will run Wear OS. It's not clear which version, though, so we will have to wait and see.
Xiaomi says the Mi Watch will be available on November 5, 2019. The company did not mention pricing, or in what territories outside of China the Mi Watch might find its way to.
