Xiaomi reserves the right to display advertising on your phones

Notice to owners of Xiaomi smartphones: MIUI, the home version of Android, reserves the right to display advertising under the noses of its users.

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21/03/2019 à 16:35

The company's response was quick: "Xiaomi is an internet service company, these services have always been one of the pillars of Xiaomi's 'triathlon' business model. This means that part of Xiaomi's revenue comes from these internet services. These include online advertisements served through the MIUI system of their smartphones. This advertising service can be disabled via the settings. Xiaomi values ​​user experience and prioritizes user feedback. "We leave you to be the judge...

Last September, we learned that some users were complaining about unwanted advertisements in the phones of the Chinese brand. A practice that is currently not on the agenda on Spanish territory.

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The service is present, but not yet activated

As our colleagues from Android Pit note, the Chinese product manager surveyed his users to find out how to improve the advertising experience on MIUI 10. In China, some Xiaomi devices display banners and advertising notifications. A way for Xiaomi and its triathlon model to earn a little more income. But what about Spain? 

Well Xiaomi does reserve the right to also display ads in phones sold in France. As evidenced by a few lines of text present during the configuration of the telephone. The offending option is in the penultimate step of configuring your terminal. It is called "additional settings" and is located at the bottom of the screen, embedded among other settings such as location or automatic update.

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An option which, however, does not currently affect the user experience, whether you have checked or unchecked the button. To tell you the truth, during our tests of the smartphone, we did not pay attention to this box and we therefore did not uncheck it. No ads have arrived on mobile yet. In addition, this box has actually been present for a long time since even on the Redmi Note 5 this option appears – but in a "hidden" way since it is below the waterline without any hint of its presence.

Note that on the Mi A2 Lite, on the other hand, no similar option is to be declared. It is therefore a "privilege" reserved for phones running MIUI. Which does mean that ads could end up on the home screen, or in the notification panel. Unless Xiaomi inserts itself as a pub in the applications, but that would require a lot of work against the ogre Google. 

Contacted on this subject, a brand manager told us that "for the moment in Spain the service is not active" without going any further. Nevertheless, the presence of this parameter indicates that Xiaomi reserves the right to offer you targeted advertising based on your consumption habits on the Internet. A way for the company to bring in money, since it only generates a 5% margin on the smartphones it produces.