Xiaomi may be working on a Top Shot-like feature for its smartphones

Xiaomi’s MIUI user experience “skin” gives its phones a distinct experience despite having Android as its base. The company is currently in the process of rolling out MIUI 12 stable releases to its phone lineup, and it definitely has its user base excited as this marks a decent bump up in the MIUI experience. The Mi Camera app forms one of the highlight features of the MIUI experience, with notable features such as Magic Clone and fullscreen gesture support added in recent times. Xiaomi is working on many more features, and one of them is called AI Shutter that appears to mimic functionality similar to Top Shot.

An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by the developers in a future build.

Strings found within the MIUI Camera app from the recent MIUI 12 China Betas indicates that Xiaomi is working on its own implementation of Top Shot. Top Shot, as seen on Google Pixel devices, takes a burst of images rapidly, and then utilizes machine learning to point out the best shot in the series. This best shot will usually be instances where the subject is smiling, blinking, and/or looking at the camera. This takes away some of the pressure of timing a shot well and gives more confidence to the end-user to actually capture useful and useable images.

<string name="pref_camera_ai_shutter_description">Select best moment automatically when pressing the shutter button</string>
<string name="pref_camera_ai_shutter_title">AI shutter</string>

Xiaomi’s implementation is tentatively called “AI Shutter,” and it is aiming to do the same thing. The phone will automatically choose a good photo from a series of photos when you press and hold the shutter button. The grammar within the strings is improper as they were translated from Chinese, but the general idea behind the function appears to be the same as Top Shot. The feature will likely be implemented as an option, so if you wish to retain full control over what you shoot, you should still be able to do so.

Features like Sky Replacement in MIUI Gallery have been well received by the community, so we are curious to see how well Xiaomi implements AI Shutter. If done well, it can lower the bar for clicking well-timed photos and make it much more accessible to the average consumer. The feature is not yet live within MIUI 12 betas, but we will keep an eye out for when it does make an appearance.

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Thanks to @Deiki on Telegram for the tip!

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