🐕 Hi, Bogdan here in Romania. Did you know Google Lens can identify dog breeds? Thanks to this, I learned about Kokoni, which is basically an unofficial breed of adorable mutts found throughout Greece. Take a minute to peruse the #kokoni tag on Instagram. You can thank me later.

Mi Band 7 Pro: The Mi-ssing link between fitness tracker and smartwatch

One of the most popular products in Xiaomi’s roster is the Mi Band family of fitness trackers. It’s been around for years – cheap and cheerful, and arguably more important than most dedicated fitness brands out there. Now Xiaomi is introducing the Pro version, which looks suspiciously close to a smartwatch. It shapes up to be a home run.

No, that’s not an Apple Watch on my wrist

• Xiaomi has a time-honored penchant for imitation when it comes to product design.
• From the first Mi phones, to Mi Pads and Mi Books, Xiaomi is not ashamed of stealing Apple’s look.
• The Mi Band 7 Pro looks like an Apple Watch with a narrower screen and no crown.
• It doesn’t get points for originality, but honestly, that won’t matter much.

What makes it Pro

• Compared to the standard Mi Band 7, you get a bigger, 1.64-inch rectangular AMOLED screen with rounded corners.
• The Pro looks more premium, but its metallic finish conceals a plastic body.
• The real upgrades are inside. The highlight is the built-in GPS, which means runners, cyclists, and hikers will get to leave their phones at home.
• NFC is also a default feature – this is notable because the standard Mi Band 7 won’t have NFC on all versions. NFC enables contactless payments, one of the nicest perks of smartwatches.
• The Mi Band 7 Pro is water resistant to up to 5ATM and can run up to 12 days on a battery charge.
• It can track dozens of sports modes and has health features like 24/7 heart rate tracking, blood oxygen level monitoring, and sleep tracking.
• It also supports voice commands, phone notifications, find-my-device, and music controls.

Here’s the kicker – it’s still incredibly affordable

• Despite the big upgrades, the Mi Band 7 Pro is very affordable. It costs the equivalent of $56 in China.
• Even if it’s more expensive in other countries (Chinese prices are among the lowest in major markets), the Mi Band 7 Pro is very competitive.
• You get most key features of a mid-range smartwatch, for 20-30% of the price. It looks the part too.
• Xiaomi will probably have problems keeping up with demand for this thing.
• Is it a fitness tracker? Is it a smartwatch? Does it even matter at this point? We’re witnessing the same phenomena we’ve seen with smartphones. The low-end is now objectively “good enough,” while the big brands differentiate themselves with unique features and ever-increasing prices.

Roundup

📱 Along with the Mi Band 7 Pro, Xiaomi also introduced the 12S series of smartphones. The flagship 12S Ultra features a giant 1-inch camera sensor and Leica Summicron lenses and color profiles. On paper, this is the camera phone to beat in 2022 (Android Authority).

🔏 WhatsApp, unlike parent company Meta, tends to get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to privacy. How else could it get away with only adding this extremely basic privacy feature in 2022? (Android Authority).

🚲 Amazon is getting on the micromobility bandwagon. That means cargo e-bikes and on-foot deliveries in London. It’s as sustainable as it gets, but you have to wonder – is it anything more than a PR exercise? (Engadget).

💻 20 Bitcoin could get you 23 terabytes of police data on more than 1 billion Chinese citizens (Bloomberg).

🚘 Tesla cars will now scan the road for potholes and rough conditions, and automatically adjust suspensions to mitigate the bumpy ride (Electrek).

😿 No bids on Chevy’s first NFT, even though it came with a free Corvette Z06. Cry me a river (The Verge).

🤒 Future Apple Watch models could detect whether the user runs a fever. Apple is just way ahead of everybody when it comes to health tracking (Bloomberg).

📢 What if every sign at the airport pointed you towards your gate? Delta is experimenting with a technology that might achieve just that (Quartz).

🎮 The phone is terrible for cloud gaming, argues The Verge’s Alex Cranz (The Verge).

💸 Dutch University retrieves Bitcoin ransomware payment and makes a €300,000 profit (The Register).

⚠ 40 million people in Japan affected by cell phone outage (Digital Trends).

Tuesday Chart

Tired of using the same old invectives? Do you enjoy silly charts? Reddit’s u/halfeatenscone has got you covered with an analysis of 15 years worth of online trash talking.

Very respectfully yours,

Bogdan Petrovan, Managing Editor