Imagine being able to use your smartphone like a computer and even play games on it. Isn’t that fantastic? Windows is coming to Xiaomi phones. Developers are working to provide Windows support to Android phones of many brands. Supported devices include Microsoft’s Android phone. Developers have greatly improved Windows support for some phones, making them suitable for daily use.
Microsoft has long been working to make the ARM platform compatible with Windows. The release of the Surface RT model in 2012 officially began the ARM era for Windows. Running Windows 8.1 RT, the Surface RT had a 10.6-inch display, NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset, 2GB RAM and 32/64GB of storage. The specs are pretty low today, but in 2012 they were pretty good. The ARM version of Windows 8.1 lacked x86-specific features. The “.exe” application could not be installed, applications could be only downloaded from the store. Support for software updates was pretty poor, the Surface RT was not even updated to Windows 10.
Microsoft’s failure with the Surface RT paved the way for further advances in the ARM industry. Microsoft quickly worked to fix the shortcomings and raised ARM support to a higher level with the introduction of Windows 10. There are devices with Snapdragon chipsets running Windows since 2017. Qualcomm’s official Windows support has also become a big deal for smartphones. Some Snapdragon SoCs used in laptops were also built into smartphones, so it’s easier to bring Windows to Xiaomi phones.
Windows is Coming to Xiaomi Smartphones
In the photo there is an Xiaomi phone with Windows 11, this model is the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S. Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 platform, the Mi Mix 2S was the flagship smartphone of its time and is still more powerful. Since it has one of the most compatible chipsets to Windows, it can offer a very stable Windows 11 experience compared to other phones.
Windows is coming to Xiaomi devices, but the development is not yet complete and therefore still has some problems. But it is almost ready for daily use. Virtualization and camera do not work in Windows 11 installed on the Mi Mix 2S, but the sound is expected to be fixed in the future. Virtualization and camera are broken on almost all models. The sound problem can be easily fixed with a Bluetooth speaker or a headset. Also, the Mi Mix 2S supports external video output, so you can connect it to the monitor and enjoy a desktop experience with Windows 11.
First of all, you need to have the UEFI bootloader installed on your phone to run Windows. The developers have ported and maintained the EDK2 UEFI bootloader on various devices. This allows you to use Windows on your phone. The processor support of the EDK2 project is limited, so it may not work properly on all phones. Until a few months ago, only Snapdragon 835 and Snapdragon 845 were supported, but now Windows can also be used on models with Snapdragon 855. Click here to view the status of devices that support Windows.
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— Simone Franco (@Simizfo) March 10, 2022
In the video below, you can see the gaming performance of a OnePlus 6T with an ARM version of Windows 11. Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition can be played at an average of 30 frames per second. In addition, many games like Need for Speed: Most wanted, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and Counter-Strike Global Offensive were also tested. The OnePlus 6T achieves 467 single-core scores in Geekbench 5 and 1746 multi-core scores in the synthetic performance tests. The 3DMARK Night Raid test achieves 2834 points.
In summary, Windows 11 is quickly adapting to Android devices and device support will increase further in the coming months. Repurposing your old phone as a Windows computer is a sensible idea. Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S is an old model but can offer high performance and is therefore suitable for Windows. What do you think of the idea of ​​using Windows on Xiaomi and other devices?
