Xiaomi jumps on wearable bandwagon with S$16 Mi Band
Xiaomi jumps on wearable bandwagon with S$16 Mi Band
Just after announcing the retail prices of the Mi 4 flagship smartphone, Xiaomi unveiled one more thing, the Mi Band.
As a fitness tracking wrist band, the Mi Band does not bring anything new to the table. It not only tracks your walking and running speeds, it also can differentiate the type of physical activity that you are doing through its cloud service. It is rated IP67 for water and dust resistance, hence the Mi Band can survive the occasional swimming sessions.
The sleep tracking function is said to be intelligent enough to differentiate between deep and light sleep. When it detects that you are in the light sleep cycle, the Mi Band will gently vibrate to wake you up.
Xiaomi claims that the Mi Band is powered by the industry's most power-efficient Bluetooth chip, which allows it to be powered for 30 days on a single charge. If true, this is really an impressive feat since most wearable devices require a charge every few days.
One interesting feature is its ability to unlock the phone without a password. Xiaomi states that this feature currently works only with Xiaomi smartphones running Android 4.4 OS. This means that only the Mi 3 (updated to Android 4.4) and upcoming Mi 4 smartphones are able to support this feature.
The estimated retail price of the Mi Band is S$16 and comes in a range of colored wrist bands. At press time, there is no information on the availability of the device in Singapore. We will update this section when we have the information.