Xiaomi Phone Gets an Android 4.0 Beta, Only For the Adventurous

'I can haz ice creeem sandwich?' A Xiaomi M1 user tries out the Android 4.0 MIUI beta.

The Xiaomi M1 phone currently runs Android 2.3, but the Xiaomi startup team has been promising that it’ll roll-out an update to 4.0 as soon as it has managed to theme the newest version of Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) mobile OS. And now that’s a major step closer to reality with the first beta of the 4.0 ‘ice-cream sandwich’ update for Xiaomi phones being put online yesterday.

Called ‘Mioneplus,’ the beta version of the ROM is only for adventurous tinkerers who know how to ‘flash’ a new ROM onto their device. A 246MB download, it involves manually forcing your M1 phone, with the use of a PC, to install Xiaomi’s skinned Android 4.0.3. It has lots of nice, variously orange-accented or matte-black mods that replace the ice-blue and light-grey colour scheme used by Google. Here’s an earlier preview issued by Xiaomi of what the update looks like; these are the refreshed contacts and music apps respectively:

Not to be confused with the MIUI 4 ROM, which bring’s Xiaomi’s elegant theme to a number of other Android devices and languages, this new Mioneplus beta is hard-wired to work with the M1’s three-button layout, with baked-in Chinese input support and all the other localized features that’ll eventually be given to all M1 owners. The proper update, whenever it goes live, will be an easier, automatic affair for the phone owners, involving just a few clicks.

If you have a Xiaomi phone, grab the Mioneplus beta from the forums.