HyperOS 4 promises a huge system speedup! A major redesign, known from competitors, is also expected.

Overlays swell for years, accumulate features, and slow down until a moment comes when the manufacturer has to dismantle and reassemble them. This is exactly what Xiaomi is preparing with HyperOS 4, according to leaks. And I admit, the news split me in two — one half perked up curiously, the other just tiredly rolled its eyes.

I perked up at what is least visible

What interested me most was precisely what a regular user wouldn’t notice — the core rewrite. According to earlier reports, Xiaomi is moving the system’s foundation to Rust and Flutter languages and removing the bloat that has been lingering in the system since MIUI’s time. The goal is a state the manufacturer calls “zero legacy” — meaning no unnecessary inheritance. The promises sound appealing: up to 40% higher fluidity and 30% better memory management. If this holds true outside of benchmarks, it would be the best news about HyperOS in a long time, as inertia and chopped memory are among its biggest drawbacks.

And then I rolled my eyes at what is most visible

The second half of the news is unfortunately an old tune. Outwardly, HyperOS 4 is expected to move towards a “liquid glass” look — meaning a glassy, blurred design, similar to what Apple recently introduced in iOS. I understand that glass is currently in vogue, but watching a Chinese manufacturer stumble again to where Apple’s designers showed the way is tiring. The overlay should differentiate itself by character, not by recoloring windows to the same transparency as the competition a year later.

When and on what it will run

According to leaker Digital Chat Station, the public beta could start as early as August, while the stable version will likely arrive with the introduction of the Xiaomi 18 series. Among the first phones to receive the update are expected to be the current Xiaomi 17 series and Redmi K90, as usual, first in China and then globally after a delay.

Are you more drawn to the under-the-hood swiftness or the new look of a new overlay?

Source: Digital Chat Station (Weibo), Notebookcheck