HyperOS 4: 5 Biggest Upgrades on Xiaomi Phones (2026)

Xiaomi built HyperOS 4 on Android 17. Five things about it are worth knowing.

List of biggest changes of the HyperOS 4

The interface got a glass makeover

Xiaomi’s calling it “Soft Light Glass” — their spin on the liquid-glass look every OS is chasing right now. Refraction, layered cards, translucent blur, spread across the lock screen, home screen, icons, Control Centre, folders, widgets.

Not every phone gets the full version. The deeper effects are locked to flagship chips — Snapdragon 8 Elite, Dimensity 9500, Xring O1, or newer. Everything else gets a scaled-back take.

Super XiaoAi actually does things now

It’s running on Xiaomi’s own MiMo V2.5 model. Longer memory, cross-app actions, screen recognition that reads context instead of just text on screen.

Expert Mode is the one worth trying: give it something like “plan my next trip around my calendar” and it actually checks your schedule and preferences before building something. It’ll also draft a research report, put a deck together, build a site, or generate video from a single prompt — how well, I haven’t tested myself.

Inspiration Ball watches your screen and surfaces things unprompted — a map route, a calendar entry, a shopping link.

The built-in apps got smaller upgrades. Recorder recognizes meetings and summarizes them after. AI Voice Notes pulls to-dos out of photos you’ve attached. The keyboard cleans up dictation as you talk.

It’s genuinely faster

This is the one I’d notice most. Xiaomi says 27.2% more available memory and 17% faster app launches after the phone’s been running a while — plus a 14.4% cut in redundant CPU instructions versus HyperOS 3.

Individual apps back it up: Gallery scrolls up to 90% smoother, Camera opens 200ms quicker, HDR photos process in 240ms instead of 310ms.

Lock screen gets more flexible

Clocks stretch, resize, and reposition freely now — iOS 26 does something similar. Notifications stack vertically instead of cluttering the screen as separate cards, and a depth effect tucks text and clock elements behind your wallpaper’s subject.

Two phones, one inbox

Dual-Phone Syncing mirrors calls and SMS OTPs onto a second Xiaomi, Redmi, or POCO phone in real time — no Bluetooth, no shared Wi-Fi. It runs over the internet, so it still works if the two phones are on different carriers entirely.

Both need the same Xiaomi account. The phone getting the mirrored notifications must run HyperOS 4; the sender can stay on HyperOS 3.

It’s China-only for now.