MIUI 12 announced with new system animations, enhanced Dark mode, new privacy features, more

At an event in China today, Xiaomi announced the next major version of its skin, MIUI 12. The latest version of the UI skin from Xiaomi brings a number of new features and improvements including improved privacy controls, new system animations, enhanced Dark mode, and more.

To further refine MIUI, Xiaomi has overhauled the system animations across the board and included new ones for opening/closing apps, screen rotation, etc. The new animations are smoother and feel more refined. They also go well with the flatter and cleaner system UI elements. An interesting new feature is Super Wallpapers. Xiaomi has created animated 3D models of Mars and Earth and they are super detailed. On the lock screen, you will get an overview of the planet while unlocking your device will zoom into the model.

For improved navigation experience, Xiaomi has further enhanced its own gesture system and based it off the Android 10 gesture navigation system introduced by Google. There are other new gestures as well including the ability to open notifications from chat apps in a floating window using a simple swipe down gesture. The enhanced Dark mode 2.0 now supports over 40+ system applications and it has now been further optimized to work properly with third-party applications. Enabling Dark mode in MIUI 12 will also apply a dark tint on the wallpaper and the font weight will also be adjusted for improved readability.

Taking a cue from Google's Screen Calling feature, Xiaomi is also adding a new AI Calling feature in MIUI 12. This feature will automatically transcribe audio to text to help users with hearing disabilities and also offer them AI-generated responses.

Xiaomi has also focused on the privacy aspect with MIUI 12 as it adopts the Android 10 permission model. Users will now have the option to grant access to apps only while they are using it or only once. There is a new feature called Flare that will also keep a log of all the permissions and information accessed by apps on your phone. There's also a new Mask System feature that will prevent untrusted apps from accessing sensitive information like call logs, calendar, contacts, etc. It offers an option to spoof these details for apps that try to obtain such information.

MIUI 12 comes with a built-in sleep tracker that can not only track your sleep pattern but also determine the quality of sleep. Using the gyroscope on its phones, Xiaomi will also track the physical activities of users like walking, cycling, etc.

Xiaomi intends to roll out MIUI 12 to a bunch of its Redmi and Mi phones from June. The closed beta program starts in China from later today. The first batch of devices that will get the update include the Mi 10 series, the Redmi K30 and the Redmi K20 series. Other Xiaomi devices that will get the update in the second and third batch include the Mi Mix 3, Mi 8 series, Redmi Note 7 and 8 series, Redmi 8 and 7 series, Mi CC9 series, and more. The global version of MIUI 12 with largely the same feature set should be announced for Redmi and Mi phones sold outside of China within the next few weeks.