It has been over a year since Xiaomi last launched a tablet; the Mi Pad 3 was launched last year blending an iPad-esque design with MIUI. Since then, there have been no reports about a successor.
But according to a new report from XDA-Developers, the Mi Pad line-up is far from dead, as Xiaomi is currently developing a tablet device that will be powered by the Snapdragon 660 processor, and there is a high chance that it will be launched as the Mi Pad 4.
XDA-Developers has obtained firmware files from @FunkyHuawei, that has details about a Xiaomi tablet whose existence is confirmed in the MIUI configuration dataset and build.prop files provided by the source.
As for the specs, the Mi Pad 4 is expected to come equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC, which is indicated clearly by the 2.0 GHz clock-speed of the processor’s bigger core cluster in the MIUI configuration files. There are no details about the amount of RAM as well as internal storage, and also whether the latter will be expandable via a microSD card.
Camera configuration files of the upcoming device reveal that it will pack a primary 13MP OmniVision OV13855 sensor with a f/2.0 aperture, and a secondary 5MP Samsung S5K5E8 sensor with a f/2.0 aperture to handle video calls and selfies. The device might also come with portrait mode support but will miss out on 4K video recording, which is not exactly a deal-breaker as tablets are rarely used for video recording, and that too, at such high resolutions.
Additionally, a Chinese analyst named Pan Jiutang has also revealed that the Mi Pad 4 is currently under development at Xiaomi’s R&D unit.
The ‘pad/tablet’ device mentioned in the firmware files will feature a 6,000 mAh battery, which is way more than what a smartphone usually comes equipped with, further confirming that the device in question is indeed a tablet, specifically, the Mi Pad 4. Codenamed ‘clover’, the Mi Pad 4 will come equipped with an LCD panel and will boot MIUI 9 based on Android 8.1 Oreo, however, additional details about hardware specifications and an expected launch date are not known.
