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Xiaomi launches new smart home products and action camera at MWC 2015

• Egon Kilin
• March 2nd, 2015

Xiaomi, one of the few Chinese smartphone companies that have managed to gain international praise for their cheap, yet high-end smartphones, is not just a company that makes phones. Xiaomi demonstrated that today at the MWC 2015 show, where it showed off new smart home products, created around Marvell’s new chipset designed specifically for IoT. The motto of Marvell is Smart Life and Smart Lifestyle, which Xiaomi tries to take to the next level with a new smart air purifier and a smart hub. Besides cementing its position in the home automation industry, Xiaomi also ventured into a completely new market at the MWC 2015 today. The Chinese company launched a new action camera that aims to rival with a market dominated by GoPro.

First off, let’s see what kind of smart home devices Xiaomi introduced at the MWC 2015 today. The Xiaomi Air Purifier is a comprehensive system that can the detect the purity levels in the air, alert the homeowner to filter changes and abnormal readings within the home. The Air Purifier connects with the smart hub, which orchestrates all the smart devices within a house. Thanks to Marvell’s new IoT chipset as well as the upgrades Xiaomi has made to its software platform for home automation, we can now enjoy better Wi-Fi connectivity, cloud integration and cross-platform integration among various smart devices.

The new smart home module allows third-party developers to upgrade from traditional devices with ease, thanks to the new integration features Xiaomi offers in the new smart home module. At the same time, the module itself, supports power on device detect, software updates, and maintenance features for both software and network. The new module is aimed at the Chinese market, which seems logical as there’s where the most need is for high-end air purifying systems. The Air Purifier does have a drawback: it uses a lot of power. Even though the smart home solutions offered by Xiaomi are interesting, fans of the company and attendees at the MWC 2015 seem to be more interested in the Yi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUBJVgciigo

What Yi? Yi is the name of the new action camera from Xiaomi which wants to rival GoPro, and it might just succeed in doing so, thanks to the usual aggressive pricing: around $65. As the GoPro Hero base model is $130, the new Yi action camera should definitely steal some spotlight. The camera is not too shabby, as it boasts with a 16 MP sensor that can shoot 1080p video at 60fps, which is pretty good for such a cheap action camera. Besides, the Xiaomi Yi action camera gets 64 GB internal storage, and it’s a lot lighter than the GoPro Hero, for example, weighing only about 70 grams. The action camera gets the same waterproof certification as most GoPro cameras, so it’s able to withstand immersion for up to 40 meters underwater. The sad part about it is that it’s exclusive to China for now. But we expect it to land in the U.S. soon enough.