Xiaomi is rolling out to MIUI a new redesigned feature to protect smartphones from theft

Xiaomi’s MIUI overlay ranks among the most sophisticated systems of all. That means Xiaomi, Redmi, POCO, or Black Shark smartphone owners now have plenty of useful features and handy tweaks that make our everyday life significantly more enjoyable and easier.

The developers of the overlay are working hard to continuously improve it and fix bugs that appear in the overlay. Recently, though, Xiaomi pleasantly surprised us with a new MIUI feature that clearly has great potential. Misuse of data from stolen smartphones will be harder than ever before.

Stolen Xiaomi will be “good for nothing”

More experienced smartphone owners with Xiaomi’s overlay have probably already encountered the “Lost Mode” feature. This handy tool can, in case your phone gets stolen, remotely lock it, completely erase it, or even mark it on a map. More information about remote control is available in this article.

The features mentioned above work properly as long as you have an internet connection—most often mobile data. But what happens if the thief removes the SIM card from your smartphone? Do you lose internet and, therefore, this protection too? Not quite.

In the latest Chinese MIUI 21.10.14 beta, a new interesting feature has appeared. If you remove the SIM card from your smartphone, the phone will start vibrating and a 30-second timer will begin—during which you must enter the PIN or your fingerprint. If you don’t, the phone will be completely locked; you won’t even be able to power it off, and it will automatically switch to Lost Mode.

So data from the smartphone will be much harder to access thanks to this new functionality. The question remains, though: how—and whether at all—the phone can be controlled remotely without a SIM card. We’ll get answers to these debates along with the reveal of the MIUI 13 overlay, which should include exactly this feature.

We’ll continue to monitor the whole situation in detail and then publish all updates on our Xiaomi Planet technology portal. If you want to find out about everything important first, join our Facebook group and sign up to receive interesting articles directly in your email inbox.