Today (August 16) marks seven years since Xiaomi‘s MIUI was first released and Xiaomi is celebrating that with fans on the MIUI Forum. In the past 7 years, the Custom ROM has evolved right from the first MIUI V1 to the present lightning fast MIUI 9. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that in the last 7 years, MIUI has undergone nine different changes with the resulting changes in the icons and more features added.
The evolution of MIUI is captured in these pictures of the different icons of the interface from version 1 to 9. The difference could be seen, not only in the color scheme but also in the icons themselves which have seen some changes, even though some still retain their looks from previous versions.
The photos were released by Xiaomi today as part of celebrations for the 7th anniversary of MIUI. It should be noted that MIUI 1 was developed only for the Google Nexus One and came with more functionalities back then when compared to the Pure AOSP ROM. Version 2 came with support for more smartphones but MIUI, as we know it today, began with MIUI 3, released in April 2012. This marked a major milestone for MIUI ROM as themes were first introduced on Version 3 and it gave users the flexibility to customise how they want their ROM to look like. MIUI 3 was based on Google’s Android Mobile Operating System 2.3, named “Gingerbread” and the Mi 1 came pre-installed with MIUI 3.
In terms of the appearance of the icons, MIUI 5 had the largest changes in its looks as it underwent a major GUI redesign and revamp, from the addition of notification at a swipe-down shade menu to system animations and desktop beautification, but yet retain the similar users’ experience and operations. It was on MIUI 5 that all Google Services were removed due to new regulations in China.
Read More: Xiaomi Rolls Out Second MIUI 9 Closed Beta to 12 More Models
MIUI 6 also came with changes in the icons and saw a shift from flat icons to bold icons with a higher degree of recognition. The icons have continued to get slight changes since then until the current version but most importantly, more and more features became available on MIUI with the latest version said to be lightning fast and smooth. We’ve got photos of the icons of the remaining versions below.
