Android One has gained many many fans, but one of their highest profile fans must be Hugo Barra and the Xiaomi team.
Xiaomi, known for their great value phones and highly customised version of Android known as MIUI, are apparently big fans of the Android One initiative started by Google earlier this year.
Android One is basically a method of phone makers to build simple and affordable Android smartphones that run Android how Google like it. I.E simple and stock. The benefit of an Android One device is that customers will receive timely updates direct from Google without having to wait for manufacturers to get around to it.
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So far a number of high profile Indian phone makers have joined the Android One plan, but Hugo Barra has hinted that Xiaomi could be on board soon too. In a recent interview, Barra claimed that he and fellow Xiaomi bosses were big fans of Android One, and would be interested in launching their own Android One device.
Such a phone would obviously gain Xiaomi more fans around the world, but would also be a strange move as they would have to leave behind MIUI, one of the major selling points of owning a Mi device.
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MIUI is just one of the pillars of the Xiaomi Empire. Seeing the units Xiaomi sells at the moment they can bet now on 2 horses because some like the hardware of the Redmi phones but are not a big fan of MIUI ROM. With a Leadcore SOC they could make fairly cheap LTE phones with stock Android and on the side offer a MIUI ROM or the MIUI Launcher.
People who buy low cost phones would actually desire more skinned rom and features rather than stock android. Its only those extreme techy people who want beast spec phone with stock android. Unless ofcourse Android can market some great advantage of the rom over a skinned rom to low budget phone users in India, Africa, et al.
Somehow I find that people love vanilla (or AOSP) like I do. I am against every Google’s initiative (one, silver & gold) that trends to harm AOSP. If they want it really really to be popular they need to make it decent really affordable & available world wide with most importantly really good community support & fresh sources so that anyone can pick his favorite ROM. Their is not much of really good kernel developers so every one they attract is a big gain for them.
In theorie it is still possible to continue with MIUI while receiving direct updates from Google.
The way it works have to change though as MIUI will be more like a shell running on top of the stock android. I don’t think that Xiaomi will abandon MIUI seeing how much time and effort they have put in to it up till now. IMO it is one of the best android rom’s out there.