In the past, there were rumors of Xiaomi developing an OS in 2013-2014. The Mi 4 was rumored to ship with MIOS, but it was released with Android instead. The leaked image shows the updates page of a Xiaomi phone running an internal build of MiOS. This alpha is from November 5th, 2022.
Xiaomi may be concerned that the US could follow through on threats to ban Google services licenses, OR they could be looking to reduce their dependence on Android, even though it is open source.
MIOS may be similar to MIUI as it’s a fork of Android like HarmonyOS. But internally it will be different as it uses a microkernel, like Google’s Fuchsia, rather than a monolithic kernel like Linux.
