Windows 10 coming to the Xiaomi Mi 4 on 3 December

After Xiaomi agreed to use its Mi 4 smartphone as a test bed for Windows 10, it became pretty clear that we would soon be seeing a Windows 10-powered smartphone from Xiaomi. And while Microsoft just announced its Windows 10-powered Lumia 950 and 950 XL smartphones for India recently, Xiaomi had something up its sleeve as well.

PhoneRadar reports that the company’s founder Lin Bin seems to have made a small yet important announcement of its own and it was not a new smartphone powered by Windows 10, but Windows 10 being available as a firmware update starting from 3 December.

While the details are still sparse, this means that every Mi 4 user will have an option to download and run Windows 10 on their device. So for those who have been longing to try out Windows Phone or Windows 10, buying the Mi 4 will indeed be an added bonus.

There’s no clarity on how a Mi 4 user will be able to dual-boot to Android or Windows 10. This would indeed be a first but if it isn’t, it would mean that users will have to choose whether they want to continue with Android or make the switch to Windows.

The Xiaomi Mi 4 currently retails for Rs 14,999 for the 16 GB version. What you get is a Full HD display, quad-core, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC with 3 GB of RAM, a 13 MP primary camera and a 3080 mAh battery. What you don’t get is 4G bands; so this may indeed be a deal breaker for many.

Still then, Xiaomi seems to doing Microsoft a favour by giving its customers the option to choose an OS with Windows 10 as an alternative. We should have more details about the update and its options on 3 December. As of today, the only other Xiaomi  product to be powered by Windows 10 is the recently launched Mi Pad 2 tablet that is powered by an Intel chipset.