Xiaomi's New Astrophotography Mode Brings Pro-Features to the Masses

First revealed by XDA developers, Xiomi’s MIUI 12 is supposedly a long-exposure mode, allowing users to capture long-trail photos of moving objects. Despite being called the “Astrophotography” mode, long-exposure shots have been proven to have many uses from capturing large crowds of people, traffic at night, water movement and much more.

Furthermore, in the same leak, XDA developers has unveiled photos of the feature already being utilised in a beta build of MIUI 12 running on a Redmi K30 Pro. The screenshots shows many different settings users may choose in order to get the best results possible, ranging from light painting, silky water to a starry sky mode.

While other phone manufacturers - specially in the higher end market - have already implemented this feature onto their devices, Xiaomi’s implementation brings us new excitement. For the first time, users who own entry level devices will be able to perform camera tricks that have been long locked behind a pay wall.

This announcement does not only bring a pro feature to the masses, but reassures us that Xiaomi’s main goal remains the same: accessibility. In a time where the company has aimed to innovate its design language, using more premium construction techniques and offering increasingly expensive devices, this announcement shows us that Xiaomi still cares to offer top of the line features for a lower place.

Or at least we hope so - besides the existence of this feature, not much is known in terms of which devices will and will not support this feature. If the company’s history of introducing features such as night mode across their entire range of devices is anything to consider however, then we can’t see this new Astrophotography mode being any being.

Does this announcement excite you? Let us know below!

To watch a video on this announcement, click here

To read an article about whether or not the Mi Airdots are worth your money in 2020, click here

5 Weird Xiaomi Products You May not Have Known Existed

Besides being a notable smartphone manufacturer, in many countries, Xiaomi is looked at as a valuable player in the consumer electronics market. What this results to is a variety of products that are not only interesting, but outright weird. Today we will look at 5 weird Xiaomi products you may not known existed.

Xiaomi Air Humidifiers

Coming at multiple shapes and sizes, as well as a range of price tags, Xiaomi seems really concerned with your air quality! But whereas the rest of this list will go down to some of Xiaomi’s weirdest creations, we think that its slew of air humidifiers fit well with the company’s mission to bring technology into more people’s lives.

Being often paired with a smartphone app, this is an appliance that leaves some thankful for the convenience and others confused as to how much tech is enough tech.

Xiaomi Oven

Who do you turn to when you need a nice lunch? No, not your mother, but Xiaomi! For 299 RMB, this oven is exactly like any other oven you could buy. With no distinct functionality, what does Xiaomi offer to sway us into trusting them with our culinary efforts? The answer lies in the clean, minimalist design language that Xiaomi has come to perfect over the years. I mean just look at it - now that’s an oven I can trust!

Xiaomi Laundry Machine

Let’s run through this scenario: You get home from a long day of work guided by the GPS on your K30 Pro, then you take off your jacket and turn on your air humidifier with your phone. After getting relaxed, a little hunger kicks in and you make a nice chicken on your Xiaomi oven, but when eating it, you get your favourite white shirt all dirty. What do you do now? Well, use your Xiaomi Laundry Machine of course.

Priced at 779 RMB, like many products in this list, the Xiaomi Laundry Machine doesn’t have much in its way that makes it stand out from the competition. This is of course not considering the product’s design language, which provides a clean, beautiful way to introduce an usually heavily industrial product into your home.

Xiaomi Suitcase

For a technology company, you’d never imagine Xiaomi would produce a suitcase. This isn’t one of those battery packed suitcases either, it’s just a normal suitcase! For approximately 199 RMB, you get exactly what you paid for, a stylish, small, usable suitcase. I suppose the only connection this product has to technology is its ability to carry it!

Xiaomi Fan

Now that quarantine has forced many of us to stay inside our homes, do you ever just get unbearably warm? Worry not, the same company that brought you the Redmi K30 Pro now brings you a cold breeze! At 219 RMB, slightly more than the suitcase, you’re able to sit back and enjoy life without a sweat!

But unlike the suitcase, this product packs a smartphone app, allowing you to fine tune the intensity of your fan to perfection - Thank you technology, this is just what we needed!

After taking a look at all these products, we can safely say that Xiaomi is a very impressive company. When they’re not delivering ground-breaking phones, they are bringing us beautiful home products that if not innovative, at least have enough uniqueness to be worth existing.

Enjoy this article? Read our impressions of the Xiaomi Toothbrush here

What We Learned After Using Microsoft Apps For One Week

When thinking about phone software, users usually take their Google apps for granted. From Google Play, Google Translate to Google Chrome, many of us may never bother to see what other technology companies may have to offer. With curiosity in mind, we replaced all our Google apps with Microsoft Apps for one week, hoping to find useful apps we may have never come across otherwise.

Bing

Did we keep it: No

Microsoft’s infamous take on the Google search engine, Bing offers an aesthetically pleasing application. With the ability to quickly snap a photo of something and search for it, as well as a detailed privacy search setting, our initial impressions of the application were very positive. Very quickly however, we found that the speech detection feature was extremely flawed, rarely correctly detecting our voice.

Furthermore, unlike Google Chrome or Safari, which quickly separate incognito and normal tabs, Bing’s “tabs” feature was a bit too confusing for our likings. What this amounted to is an app that is good for basic text searches, but for the quick speech-based search, which we find ourselves doing a lot of, it simply didn’t make the cut.

Edge Browser

Did we keep it: Yes

Perhaps the biggest surprise of our experiment, we found Microsoft’s Edge Browser to be more functional than Google Chrome. Packing a very minimalistic interface, as well as a quick to understand layout, we have never browsed as fast as we did during this experience.

Where Edge really shines however, is with its slew of extra features, with the most notable one being a continuity feature that allows you to quickly continue your Android search on your Windows computer.

Here Maps

Did we keep it: No

Here Maps is an app that we wish we could love. It has a very nice design language, something we noticed across most of Microsoft’s apps, and is extremely responsive. Here Maps also offers a very intuitive offline feature that works better than the competition, a feature that could save users some data as well as direction in situations where connection may simply not be available.

Where Here Maps really fails is in its attention to detail. In Vietnam, where we are located, motorcycle and car specific roads exist, and with Here Maps not being as developed as Google maps, it simply wasn’t able to tell the difference. We imagine that it might have better integration in other countries, but for users in our case scenario, the lack of attention to detail could potentially lead users to legal trouble as they enter a road they were not supposed to.

Microsoft Launcher

Did we keep it: No

A very clean, smooth, and functional launcher - The Microsoft Launcher is lovely. The daily tasks section as well as the calendar featured in the app create an experience that just feels more productive. While we would love to keep this launcher, it simply does not function well with the gestures featured in Xiaomi’s latest software update, making using it rather frustrating.

For those not on Xiaomi phones, this won’t be a setback, letting you access an experience that feels very appropriate.

One Drive

Did we keep it: No

There isn’t much that sets One Drive apart from other solutions such as Google Drive or Dropbox. This is fine, as it means that One Drive works fine, but in our case, where we already used something before, there simply isn’t a need for this app on our phone.

OneNote

Did we keep it: Yes

Being the direct competitor to Google Keep, OneNote offers a clean, simplistic and productive way to keeping field notes. We’ve been long looking for a more productivity varient to Google’s app, so this was a major win - with no noticeable setbacks either.

The inclusion of different notebooks creates a more convenient and organised way of taking notes, and makes us feel like the inclusion of this app in our daily lives will lead us to become more productive.

Outlook

Did we keep it: No

Outlook is significantly more organised than Gmail, but it has one main flaw: The reminders feature that it likes to boast about simply doesn’t work. In our experience, with a massive need for a reliable way to keep upcoming events due to our tight work schedules, we were looking to this feature, but it simply did not work.

In conclusion, using Microsoft apps instead of Google apps for one week was definitely a welcome change. It taught us about what Google excelled at that we simply took for granted, and showed us a little bit of what other companies can do better than what we were previously used to.

Would you like to know about our experience with these apps as well as a few others? Watch our video!

The 72HZ K20 Pro: Evolution X ROM Experience

With the release of the K30 Pro, many smartphone enthusiasts have voiced two complaints: an un-fondness of Xiaomi’s software, and disappointment that Xiaomi’s latest skipped out on the 2020 quintessential high refresh screen. By installing a beloved ROM and overclocking the screen on our K20 Pro, we got a quick glimpse of what the K30 Pro could’ve been - and we really enjoyed it.

We have always been avid believers in bootloading your Xiaomi phone, it’s the best way to tap into a community of developers that truly aims to deliver an experience that matches your needs. The Evolution X ROM is no different, aimed at those who wish they could get the essential feel of a Pixel phone with a tad bit of customisation. This is a smooth, simple, clean experience with no hassles.

In terms of customisation, although the Evolution X ROM does not allow any features that completely sway from the Google vibe it aims to recreate, options such as the shape and size of icons still allow for creative home screen designs to take place with ease. Yet despite reaching the same levels of simplicity that get many to buy Google Pixel phones, is this ROM necessarily better?

On one hand, it created this lighter atmosphere that made us feel like our phone was created to perfect basic tasks. Getting to what we wanted to do was always simple and in reach, eliminating the distraction that comes with more crowded ROMs. But this doesn’t necessarily make it better, because to some, ourselves included, the extra quirks that come with a ROM resembling Xiaomi’s own makes us feel as if our phone is more capable, instead of simple.

While one’s ROM of choice comes down entirely to preference, what about overclocking the screen? Surely, having a smoother experience is objectively better, right? Well, we had mixed feelings here too. The experience was significantly smoother, with scroll-based apps such as Instagram feeling more refined, but that’s all it was, a more refined experienced, not a better one in any way. In other words, although scrolling through Instagram felt smoother, it wasn’t any better than it was before - it was still just scrolling.

And when you consider that overclocking your display may come with some sacrifices such as battery efficiency, it becomes really important to ask: if phones are meant to be used as tools, presumably ones that last us all day, is it worth sacrificing its longevity for a few moments of glamour? We don’t think so, which is why we are so satisfied with our new K30 Pro, but so some, perhaps smoothness makes all the difference.

What do you think, would you sacrifice functionality for simplicity? How about longevity for glamour? Let us know in the comments below!
To watch a video version of this article, click here

To read on Xiaomi’s recent security fiasco and why it shouldn’t bother you, click here

We Are Updating Our Review Policy!

Note: Before we begin with today’s post, we are excited to announce that we are considering implementing an email newsletter - allowing you a new way to interact with our content. We would like your feedback on what content should be provided to email subscribers, please click here to quickly take a survey and give us your opinion.

As our channel grows, we want to ensure that content is more accessible and easily understandable to all audiences - after all, bringing technology to everyone is Mitchell Millennial’s very purpose. To ensure this, we are implementing a long overdue change to how our reviews are formatted, hoping that our content lead you to smarter purchasing decisions.

This review system will focus on four key elements of the headphone listening experience, and will allow for a certain amount of points that when added up, will allow us to more accurately tell you whether a product is worth your money!

Build Quality and Materials (5 points)

The build quality of a pair of headphones can go a long way towards its overall usability. This category measures how durable and premium the overall construction of the headphones and their case are. A high score on this category indicates a device that won’t unexpectedly break when you most need it.

Sound (5 points)

Considered the most important feature for some, sound is perhaps the feature you will most often observe whenever using your earbuds. Measured in comparison to other wireless earbuds, a high score on this category indicates a reliable audio experience needless of the genre you may listen to.

Features (5 points)

This category measures how much the earbuds are offering as an overall package. Examples of features could include Advanced codec, active noise cancellation, wireless charging, USB C and others. A high score on this section indicates a complete package that will have something for just about everyone.

Design and UX (10 points)

Whilst audio is what many would argue is the most important category when choosing truly wireless earbuds, we believe that convenience is what makes many leave the wire world. To measure this, this category is worth twice the point as all other categories - allowing us more room to accurately reflect on how well a earbud’s design and user experience are in a day to day setting. A high score on this category means that the headphones you are buying is a joy to use - offering you everything you may need with ease.

What do you think of these changes? Let us know in the comment section below!

Want to watch a video version of this article? Click here

Hyperjuice 100w Gan Charger: USB C Everything - At a Cost

A couple years ago, popular tech YouTuber MKBHD coined the phrase “USB C all the things” Since then, we’ve done our best to live by this motto. With our latest purchase of the hyperjuice 100w gan charger, we’ve finally nailed it - but at what price?

You see, getting a batch of products equipped by USB C has never been the issue. Our Dell XPS 15 charges by USB C, our K30 Pro charges by USB C, our Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 charges by USB C - even some of our truly wireless earbuds charge by USB C. The problem then is instead in the fact that not all USB C cables are made equal.

Some USB cables charge at limited speeds, some are USB C to USB A, some USB C to C, some allow reverse charging, some don’t. How then, can we really “USB C all the things” if none of them work together flawlessly? Enter the hyperjuice 100w gan charger. an expensive, yet highly functional device that fixes this very problem.

Priced at nearly 100 USD, this isn’t a charger that anyone can justify, but by including multiple USB C charging points, with the capacity to charge at 100w, this single brick can completely top all of the products we’ve previously mentioned - yes, even the laptop!

But at 100 dollars, is this tech dream worth living? For the average person, the person who probably would never search for an article like this, probably not. These sorts of consumers probably haven’t consciously gone through the process of USB-C-ing all things, and might have done it by accident. For the tech-conscious person however, one that cares about limiting the amount of bricks they carry with them, and have dreamed of this future, it is very justifiable.

Considering that it will take a few years until USB C devices need more than 100w, your 100 dollar purchase may last you 2-4 years, making it less of an investment than it may originally seem. Furthermore, consider the fact that replacing a lost brick for your phone or computer can easily run you 20-40 dollars, and suddenly buying one 100 dollar brick that you take really good care of doesn’t seem like such a bad decision.

If this idea convinces you, then we must let you know that the hyperjuice 100w gan charger is every bit as good as it sounds. It is sleek looking, portable, powerful, and smart enough to include all the tech you need to ensure you never need another converter when travelling abroad. It is 100 dollars, but now that we’ve managed to “USB C all the things” we can’t see ourselves ever going back.

Would you ever pay 100 dollars for a charger? Let us know in the comments below!

Want to buy a 65w charger that allows you to get a taste of this dream? Click here

Wanna watch a video version of this article? Click here

Wanna know what the best Xiaomi phones in 2020 are? Click here