We study an unexpectedly sophisticated push-button phone and try to understand whether it can be called a smartphone
At the end of September, sales of the first Xiaomi push-button phones – Qin 1 and Qin 1s – began in the Middle Kingdom. Both models are intended exclusively for the Chinese market, and they will most likely never be officially supplied to us. Nevertheless, it was extremely interesting to find out what Xiaomi did on the button front. After all, all sorts of interesting things were written about these phones in the news: about USB Type-C, and about IPS screens, and about Gorilla Glass, and about a sophisticated virtual assistant with artificial intelligence and a voice translator into 17 languages, and about some special version Android, and about stereo speakers, and about LTE, and much more.
In general, yes, it was interesting. And we satisfied this interest, since the editors of DGL.ru managed to get hold of one copy of the Qin 1s model and carefully study it. And now we are ready to share this secret knowledge with you.
Further - in the form of questions and answers.
Is this really a Xiaomi phone?
Believe it or not, it’s quite difficult to say for sure whether it’s Xiaomi or not. Or rather, not even that: it is quite obvious that Xiaomi had a hand in the Qin 1 and 1s. The only question is what is the scale of Xiaomi's contribution to this project. In recent years, the company has gathered hundreds of startups of all stripes under its umbrella, bought shares in a bunch of Chinese projects, and acts as something of a consultant in some. (All this, by the way, led to the appearance of completely unexpected products - for example, Xiaomi sofas.) Take the same Black Shark - is it Xiaomi or not? It seems like yes, but the developer of this gaming device is actually Xiaochang Nanchang Black Shark Technology.
It’s the same with phones from the Qin family. Formally, this is a product of Shenzhen Multi-Pro Technology, and there is not a single mention of Xiaomi in the interface or on the box. But at the same time, the packaging resembles the style of boxes from Xiaomi smartphones, the films are approximately the same, the clip for removing the SIM card is the same, and the Qin 1s interface has a built-in virtual assistant Xiao AI, which is present in Xiaomi models for the Chinese market. Plus, on the box and in the instructions there are several QR codes, when scanned, they are sent to resources with the mi.com domain. In general, Qin feels the spirit of Xiaomi, its corporate identity and DNA. But, we repeat, formally this is a phone developed by Shenzhen Multi-Pro Technology. Although for convenience we will assume that yes, it is more likely Xiaomi than not.
Additional device features
The Xiaomi push-button phone has quite a wide range of functionality and, in terms of additional options, can be a worthy competitor to budget models.
Ai Xiaomi has the following apps and features:
- Built-in translator that can recognize 17 of the most common languages in the world and translate in real time. In terms of its capabilities, the application is practically not inferior to the pocket translator Xiaomi AI Portable Translator, which also translates online and is an indispensable gadget for traveling;
- Voice assistant. Using voice commands, the user can solve various tasks, including sending SMS, making calls, adjusting screen brightness, controlling music, translating in foreign languages, counting on a calculator, etc.;
- Built-in IR port. The memory of Xiaomi Ai Phone contains a database of almost all the world's leading equipment manufacturers, so the phone can be an excellent alternative to standard control panels. Additionally, it is possible to manually assign actions to keys. You can also control the remote control via a voice assistant.
Does Qin 1s support Russian language?
Actually, the Qin 1s interface can be displayed in three translations: English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. If you have at least a basic knowledge of Shakespeare's language, then you can use this phone without any problems.
Moreover, with the Russian language everything is also quite tolerable. In the sense that Qin 1s correctly displays messages in Cyrillic, Cyrillic tags in MP3 files, contacts in Russian, and so on.
True, you won’t be able to type messages in Russian. And in general they are typed very intricately. The phone has some kind of extremely inconvenient predictive input system, probably designed for the Chinese language. It also supports English, but... In general, even typing an address in the browser bar turns into torture.
Camera
Xiaomi Qin 2 has only one 5 megapixel camera. There is autofocus and the ability to adjust white balance. He takes very mediocre photographs, but if you suddenly see a UFO, you will have at least some kind of camera at hand.
