Did you know that the Xiaomi Photography Challenge is the second time that the company is doing this? The first one was held just last year with more than 13,000 participants from around the world, with the eventual winner awarded US$30,000 (RM125,370) as the grand prize. In this second round, the social global contest is open to everyone who has a Xiaomi smartphone will stand a chance to win prizes that total up to US$50,000 (RM208,950)!

News of Xiaomi developing its own system-on-a-chips first broke in mid-2015 when the vice president of the processor manufacturer, Leadcore announced a partnership with Xiaomi. It looks like the partnership is finally starting to show results, as Xiaomi has officially announced that they’ll be unveiling its first in-house SoC, dubbed, “Pinecore” on 28th February.

Xiaomi just announced that the latest MIUI 8.2 update is now rolling out to most of the Xiaomi phones made over the last 2 years. These devices would progressively receive the update over-the-air (OTA) through the Updater app. Users can also run a manual update by downloading the update from here too.

The first round of devices that’ll receive the MIUI 8.2 update are: Mi 3, Mi 4, Mi 4i, Mi Note, Mi Max, Redmi 1S and Redmi Note 4G.

Xiaomi's MIUI 8 testing has been going very well lately, as you may be aware the Global Beta ROM was already rollout just a week ago, the company has now announced the Stable ROM version will be released soon next month on 16 August. If everything goes according to plan, then the future Xiaomi smartphones are very likely to get the new OS preinstalled in them.

The Xiaomi group from China, while known for selling good quality devices in an affordable manner, they are also known for not having a physical store and relies on online sales especially their annual flash sales every year. It is not known if because of that, that's why Xiaomi is no longer in the top 5 spot for manufacturing phones last quarter, as OPPO and Vivo made their way into the ranks in China.

There are very few water-resistant smartphones in the market and it's for a good reason, when asked why Xiaomi, one of the popular smartphone manufacturers in China has no plans to adopt the feature, this is what the founder of Xiaomi, Lei Jun has to say.

In conjunction with the upcoming Xiaomi Max and Mi Band 2, Xiaomi has decided to throw in another surprise to the 10 May event schedule which is the long-awaited MIUI 8. It was confirmed by the company's Weibo account saying "MIUI 8 will be released on May 10, along with Mi Max, you always wanted new features, there are a whole lot of new designs, new experiences." Xiaomi Global also did the same update, along with MIUI forum as well.

This coming season, Xiaomi will be launching a Christmas sale on 10 December until 12 December 2015 on their website. The highlights of the sale is the Santa’s Special Bundle which includes the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 + 10000 mAh Mi power bank Christmas Edition + Mi Teddy Bunnies for just RM709.

The second highlight is other bundles - such as the Santa Claus Bundle,  Rudolph Bundle and the Jingle Bells Bundle with a slashed price; and a free soft case with a Mi Note purchase or free rechargeable battery with Redmi 2 purchase for RM1549 or RM399 respectively.

Xiaomi has once again overachieved themselves in Mi Singles’ Day for three years in a row, earning RMB 1.25 billion (RM86 billion!) sales in just one day. For your information, Singles' Day is held every 11 November in China. They’re also crowned the best smartphone in Tmall, and e-commerce platforms JD and Suning.

Mi Singles’ Day 2015 started with a bang at 11 November midnight and within the first 11 minutes and 56 seconds, they already went over RMB 100 million in sales at the Tmall store alone. Xiaomi exceeded RMB 1 billion after that just after 7 minutes.

Mark your calendars! On 27 October 2015, Xiaomi is excited to present you the MIUI 7 Global Stable Build for MIUI users to upgrade their phones! MIUI fans will be able to update their beloved phones through over-the-air (OTA) on the Updater app next Tuesday or visit the MIUI download page to download the ROM package. 

Devices getting MIUI 7 global stable build on Oct. 27 are: 

• Xiaomi Mi 3 
• Xiaomi Mi 4 
• Xiaomi Mi Pad 
• Xiaomi Mi Note
• Xiaomi Redmi 1S 3G 
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G, 
• Xiaomi Redmi 2/Prime