Owners of the Xiaomi Mi Box 3 Android TV streamer device have been pleasantly surprised today with a surprise upgrade from Android 6.0 Marshmallow to Android 8.0 Oreo.
This unexpected upgrade gives the Mi Box 3 a new lease on life. Some owners of the Mi Box 3 had given up on getting any more operating system or security updates and were therefore thinking of buying a different Android TV streaming device.
We’ve taken photos of the upgrade process so you can know what to expect.
Once the upgrade is finished Xiaomi gives a brief overview of the new features of Android TV Oreo.
Then you’ll see the new interface:
We haven’t tested this but there are reports that side loaded APK’s of Optus Sports and Foxtel Now still work on the Mi Box 3 after the Oreo upgrade. Our quick testing shows that Netflix, YouTube, side-loaded ABC iView APK all work fine but YMMV.
After publishing edit: Thanks to Ausdroid reader Reg for pointing out that you can enable Google Assistant on a Mi Box running Oreo, by changing the language to English (United States). Note this seems to impact searches as well, as Assistant searches for movies didn’t show some that are definitely on Netflix Australia. On the whole though it’s still a big plus.
Several members of the Ausdroid team have a Mi Box 3 so if we notice any issues we’ll let you know about them. The only little issues we’ve seen are that the Mi Box “forgot” all the paired Bluetooth devices apart from it’s own remote. So we have to add them back. Also the Red Bull app can be removed from the “Apps” shortcuts at top of Home screen and it’s Channels can also be disabled but you can’t uninstall the app.
If you’re still using your Xiaomi Mi Box 3 and have received the Oreo update, let us know what you think.
