Xiaomi announces black Mi4 coming October 28, responds to Apple’s Ive calling its design “theft”

Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun is clearly on a roll. Two days ago, he shared that the company was on track to sell 60 million smartphones in 2014. Earlier today, he sent out a post on Weibo announcing the 4G-enabled Mi4 black variant is set for release on October 28 in China. Meanwhile the 64GB version of the 4G Mi4 is expected to hit in mid-November.

Do note that the Mi4 black version will support only China’s 4G TD-LTE network bands, which means they’re only available on China Mobile. Other hardware specifications remain the same: a 5-inch full HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 mobile processor, 3GB RAM, 13 megapixel camera on the back, 8 megapixel camera on the front, and 3080 mAh battery. By default, it will run a version of MIUI based on Android 4.4.3 KitKat.

The Mi4 has been lauded for its design by early adopters. However, Apple’s product design chief Jonathan Ive does not seem to be happy with its similarities to the iPhone.

At a Vanity Fair event, Ive said:

I’ll stand a little bit harsh, I don’t see it as flattery. When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s going to work. You spend seven or eight years working on something, and then it’s copied. I have to be honest, the first thing I can think, all those weekends that I could have at home with my family but didn’t. I think it’s theft, and it’s lazy.

But Xiaomi’s vice president of product Hugo Barra has responded to that in an interview with The Economic Times:

I need to see the context of the comment to reply, but I think that there is an unnecessarily strong spotlight on us. If you make a comment about the chamfer on the Mi 4 on [sic] which is where all the controversy comes from, it’s the same. If you look at the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 has been using the design language that has been around for a while. The iPhone 6 is using design language that HTC has had for 5 years. You cannot claim full ownership of any kind of design languages in our industry.

What do you think: is the Mi4’s design copied from Apple? Does it even matter?