Xiaomi Mi Band Open Sale On Company Online Storefront, Mi 4i In Pink On Tuesday

Xiaomi is selling its fitness tracker and sleep monitor wearable, the Mi Band, in an open sale in India on its own online storefront Monday. At 999 rupees (about $15), the band does well what it’s supposed to do, and no more. One needs the Mi Fit app, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store, to set up the band.

Switch on your smartphone's bluetooth, run the Mi Fit app and in a few easy steps, one is ready for alarms, a goal for the number of steps walked each day and an automatic sleep monitor that tracks useful data such as how long a user’s deep sleep was sustained. While bluetooth is on, the Mi Band can also be paired to unlock the smartphone or tablet’s screen.

While the Mi Fit app works with most Android devices, the version available on Google’s Play Store calls Xiaomi’s own Mi Pad as an incompatible device, and doesn’t allow a download, this correspondent found. However, a simple workaround is to download the Mi Fit APK file from trustworthy sources such as APK Mirror and run it.

With the tagline “Bros are cool, fit bros are better,” the Chinese smartphone maker is also promoting the band as something that women can gift their brothers, ahead of Raksha Bandhan, an Indian festival that celebrates the relationship, on Aug. 29.

And for those fans, disappointed that Xiaomi didn’t bring its Redmi Note 2 phablet to India on Aug. 19 when it launched the global edition of its Mi user interface version 7, consolation of sorts is at hand in the form of the Mi 4i in different colors. For those who want it, there might be one in Pink as well.

The Mi 4i will go on sale, in different colors, at 2 p.m. local time in India (4:30 a.m. EDT) on Tuesday.