Xiaomi Surprises With MacBook Lookalike 'Mi Notebook Air'

[JackANSI]

You're starting from 6am on a 4.7" class phone. I consider that pretty decent, and we haven't even considered the exact amount of time you do each of these tasks as well as what brightness. I'm on the train to work by 6:30am and my old iPhone 5 would die before noon. If you were starting at 8am, that'd be one thing, but I don't think you would get any better if not worse from another smartphone in a similar size class.

Generally for the best battery life you need a ~3000 mah found in the 5.5" size class, which make up the top smartphones on the battery life chart. It may suck for your specific use case, but its perfectly in-line with the chart. There's no way any of the recent sub 5" android phones would last longer, especially the S6.

I stand by what said, the poor battery life (I guess in comparison to other phones) stereotype is inaccurate.

Apple could put a 25% larger battery in the 4.7 at the cost of 1mm, if it weren't OCD-like obsessed with thin. Sure it's "good enough" if you don't really use it to the max right now. Apple could set themselves ahead of everyone else in battery life and still be thinner than it's rivals. But stubbornly, function must follow form at all costs.

It's going to eventually bite Apple in the end.

 

[TechZeke]

Apple could put a 25% larger battery in the 4.7 at the cost of 1mm, if it weren't OCD-like obsessed with thin. Sure it's "good enough" if you don't really use it to the max right now. Apple could set themselves ahead of everyone else in battery life and still be thinner than it's rivals. But stubbornly, function must follow form at all costs.

It's going to eventually bite Apple in the end.

Indeed. It's diminishing returns. It's not like my hands are getting smaller, so at this point I really don't care about it being thinner. A thicker phone would not only be easier to hold, but we could probably have proper 2 day battery life by now which is far more useful than having a thinner phone.

 

[bubulol]

You're starting from 6am on a 4.7" class phone. I consider that pretty decent, and we haven't even considered the exact amount of time you do each of these tasks as well as what brightness. I'm on the train to work by 6:30am and my old iPhone 5 would die before noon. If you were starting at 8am, that'd be one thing, but I don't think you would get any better if not worse from another smartphone in a similar size class.

Generally for the best battery life you need a ~3000 mah found in the 5.5" size class, which make up the top smartphones on the battery life chart. It may suck for your specific use case, but its perfectly in-line with the chart. There's no way any of the recent sub 5" android phones would last longer, especially the S6.

I stand by what said, the poor battery life (I guess in comparison to other phones) stereotype is inaccurate.

I agree with him, i recently switch back on iPhone, i bought iPhone SE which it seems to have incredible battery life according some users
I just got average battery life, my former android phone, Sony Z3 Compact was better in every aspect, idle, web browsing, calling, watching videos... (Z3c got 2600/2700 mAh and nearly same size as iPhone SE)
I found some Android phone having better battery life at idle due to their power saving mode (Stamina mode from Sony, i also know Samsung has a good one)
There is no trick, bigger battery capacity does help to maintain a decent battery life
It does not mean iPhone battery life sucks, its within the average (except for Plus which seems to have a fairly good battery life)
On the contrary, you got a dozen of monstrous Android smartphones that has incredible battery life, you wouldn't be able to drain all battery life from Galaxy A5/S7 Edge in one day of use for example

 

[japanime]

@japanime credit to you for taking time to consider the paper.

The single sentence about funding for completion of the research and the paper mentions the Ministry of Education, but not a university. That sentence alone does not adequately describe the research that preceded the paper.

Which of the two professors did you mean?

The university affiliations are mentioned in the abstract:

Author affiliations

• School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Mailbox 231, 2 South Taibai Road, Xian 710071, People’s Republic of China
• Centre for research in innovation management, Brighton University, 154–155 Edward Street, Brighton BN2 0JG, UK

 

[grahamperrin]

Thanks.

Co-authored by a professor working for a university in China.

The co-author from China is more recently a member of staff at a UK university, and he has years of prior experience of research in this country. I attended a very memorable seminar given by him some time before he became a lecturer at Xidian University. Given at the Freeman Centre, where CENTRIM (the Centre for Research in Innovation Management) was co-located with SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) – internationally recognised as a leading centre of research on science, technology and innovation policy.

The other co-author is more recently Professor of Management (Innovation) at University of Kent.

Re: the article,

… amounted to little more than:

Smaller companies are struggling to compete, so instead of doing all of the hard work, they're employing a different business model: copying the designs of more established companies. This means they save money by doing none of the hard work and can capitalize on a poor middle class which is desperate for the look of the newest technology but doesn't have the fiscal means to purchase it. Oh, and those mean old capitalists just don't understand our ways. Here's how the companies are doing it...."​

How's that for an abstract? …

Without losing a sense of humour, I'll borrow from the original abstract "… simplistic analysis is inadequate to describe novel approaches to the production of new goods …"; and from the article "… Research on Shanzhai is still at an early stage and much work remains to be done in order to better understand the phenomenon. …"; and (standard disclaimer) views expressed by me beyond the brighton.ac.uk domain are mine and do not attempt to represent those of the University of Brighton; and I have not yet expressed a view about Shanzhai, Xiaomi or Mi Notebook Air.

From Wikipedia, which I don't treat as definitive: Shanzhaiism has an equivalent English term: tinker.

Re: a recent deal involving sale of patents, Microsoft said: "… Partnerships with companies such as Xiaomi are central to Microsoft’s strategy to work with industry leaders around the world to meet the needs of joint customers.".

 

[japanime]

and (standard disclaimer) views expressed by me beyond the brighton.ac.uk domain are mine and do not attempt to represent those of the University of Brighton;

Ah, so you and Mr. Flowers are (or were) colleagues? At CENTRIM?

 

[grahamperrin]

Yep, both Steve and Ming. Ming skimmed through the other topic and replied to me with a handful of comments. I'll probably see Steve next week, after I read the article.

I did once use a knock-off, maybe a decade ago, but that's a story for a different topic.

The Microsoft deal

Some early reactions appeared around https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/22957787 … under Alternatives to iOS and iOS Devices but terms of the deal were not disclosed; if some of those patents quietly lead to improvements to Xiaomi notebooks, I'll be unsurprised. Microsoft's announcement: Microsoft and Xiaomi expand partnership to bring productivity services to millions of devices and customers.

 

[japanime]

Yep, both Steve and Ming. Ming skimmed through the other topic and replied to me with a handful of comments. I'll probably see Steve next week, after I read the article.

You probably should have included that disclaimer when you first brought up the study, then. Otherwise, some might suspect you were a shill for the authors.

 

[grahamperrin]

Long before I brought up the study, my profile had the link to my home page, which shows affiliations.

 

[Queen6]

The Mi Notebook Air is likely to be a pretty good, as Xiao Mi`s hardware is usually decent, with battery life being the only real concern. Recently I compared the Xiao Mi MateBook and Samsung`s TabPro S with the MateBook comparing very favourably, the Samsung winning due to it`s impressive runtime on battery & AMOLED display.

Xiao Mi`s approach to tech is very different to Apple`s being one of delivering high-quality technology that doesn’t need to cost a fortune, incorporating their customers feedback into the product range. Certainly from my observations that`s exactly what Xiao Mi is delivering. Give these companies a couple generations to develop their products and they will easily be at the same level as Apple offers and far more realistic price points, in some respects they are already there which is impressive given that this is Xiao Mi`s first shot at a full desktop OS devices.

I also find it humorous that should any company release a thin & light notebook they are immediately accused of copying Apple, yet Apple stole that crown off Sony years ago....

Q-6

 

[bubulol]

There are good and bad news about this Xiaomi Notebook Air:
- 13 is still not on sale on most of online chinese sellers
- Price is higher than expected, thanks for these chinese sellers who take some margin, 13 will start from 909/950$
That does not include delivery cost and potential custom duty
The other bad news, whole system is in chinese, this is Windows 10 Home Chinese single language edition, therefore if you want to full re-install new fresh Windows 10 in english, licence might not be actived
Ok Apple price is higher but you expect a great customer service and solid warranty, fast shipping service, OSX...
That a ****in joke with Windows, why you cant fresh install in your own language? Even English does count as a language lmao
The only good new, reviews are pretty enthusiastic about it, design/build quality/performance (only battery life seems to be lower than expected)

 

[lawrencesheed]

The downside to the Xiaomi air is that while you can hackintosh it, you need to use a m.2 slot for a broadcom or atheros wifi card as the onboard intel doesn't have drivers.

The rest is fairly straightforward to do.

12.5" is 100% doable, the 13" one is less so, due to some driver issues.

If you read chinese, a few threads on it. I link to some on a thread in TonyMacx here - http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/xiaomi-mi-notebook-air.198598/page-2 , which ironically got linked back to the thread in question. Circular ref hehe.

Original thread in chinese here https://www.zhihu.com/question/48963518/answer/114040290

and full install instructions for 12" here http://bbs.pcbeta.com/viewthread-1708645-1-2.html

Looking marginally further, looks like wifi + bluetooth could be sorted with
an original m.2 slot adaptor for original mac wifi BCM94360CS2 adaptor

eg
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=536456437295&ns=1&abbucket=16#detail


Would need to see if it fits though, but the antenna's should be fine as its close enough to the original intel card position wise.

 

[grahamperrin]

… m.2 slot for a broadcom or atheros wifi card as the onboard intel doesn't have drivers. …

If someone is to consider dual booting of something other than Windows alongside Mac OS X:

• should there be a preference for Atheros hardware?

(I read a few bad things about the willingness of Broadcom to offer drivers.)

 

[lawrencesheed]

If someone is to consider dual booting of something other than Windows alongside Mac OS X:

• should there be a preference for Atheros hardware?

(I read a few bad things about the willingness of Broadcom to offer drivers.)

That specific broadcom is Apple native driverwise, so works out of the box for OSX.
Its literally an Apple Wifi card in an m.2 adaptor.

None of the other bits in the machine are an issue other than the wifi (although "deep" sleep is a bit problematic from the notes in the chinese forums, but its also problematic in windows apparently. With the ssd's its not too onerous to actually shutdown though).

The intel cards used in the Xiaomi Air I think have linux drivers already, need to check though about stability.

So the major OS choices are sorted - Linux / OSX / Win10