Xiaomi to cease MIUI global beta program in July citing ‘lack of feedback’

Damien Wilde | Jun 17 2019 - 5:12 am PT

We often think of beta programs as a way for users to try new features before a full rollout but for OEMs such as Xiaomi, their MIUI beta program acts as a way to get valuable feedback before stable releases too.

Through its online Community forum, Xiaomi has confirmed it will end the global MIUI beta program from July 1st (via XDA Developers). Xiaomi engineers clearly haven’t been getting the important feedback they need to tweak and enhance device performance and so have decided to cut the program short.

Given that the MIUI beta is regularly updated and is one of the biggest beta programs of its kind, it is odd that the carpet is being pulled from underneath users. Within the post, Xiaomi explains the decision behind pulling the MIUI beta to global users. The biggest complaint being the lack of real feedback from users on each update.

As more Mi Phone models got introduced to the market,more users started using MIUI Beta through different channels. Very often, they use it on a day-to-day basis on their main phones.

However, MIUI Beta is made for public testing and requires the user to have a very high tolerance for bugs and faults. MIUI Beta is released in the early stages of the development to allow our core fans to contribute to the development process.

They use our new features before everyone else, and then provide their feedback and suggestions to our R&D team, which helps us improve MIUI before it’s released in its stable iteration.

MIUI Beta is not a primary way to experience new features, but more a means for experienced users to test the software and provide suggestions.

As the MIUI experience has matured, the need for stability is becoming increasingly more important.

In order to meet the demands of mostof our users and release stable version updates more frequently, our team of engineers has decided to stop releasing the global version of MIUI Beta for all devices starting July 1,2019.

The company has said that it will continue to seek user feedback but it is unclear how it will do so without access to user beta ROMs and the like. It’s also unclear how this may affect the rollout and development of the upcoming MIUI 11 which is built upon Android Q. Given the roadmap states that we will see devices with the Q build by the end of 2019, maybe this decision may speed up that process.

For fans though, this is a big disappointment to not be able to install and enjoy the latest MIUI beta builds on their devices. If you are affected, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.