Xiaomi has announced a few changes to its MIUI system development version policy, bringing bad news for owners of Xiaomi smartphones launched in the first half of 2018 or earlier. Once the new changes come into effect on July 5th onwards, Xiaomi will be rolling out MIUI beta ROMs to a few numbers of models. However, it is pertinent to note that the new changes do not affect the release of MIUI stable ROMs. Xiaomi, as big as it is right now, didn’t start off with hardware. For a long time, Xiaomi’s primary business was software, creating custom aftermarket forks of Android for different devices. Of course that changed for the most part after the company started making hardware of its own. Xiaomi has, however, actively engaged in developing its custom Android skin MIUI, often bringing new features irrespective of the Android version since MIUI’s update cycle differs from Android’s. New features often make their way from the closed beta to the open beta and then to the stable channel and users’ feedback during beta plays a pivotal role in bringing new functionality to MIUI. To streamline development, Xiaomi has now announced a new plan to focus on beta ROMs only for new smartphones and is taking budget devices out of the program. The company has cited a lack of beta testers for this decision. The latest announcement could be relevant for similar reasons. Source: XDA Developers
