Xiaomi's new flagship Mi 8 (right), an anniversary smartphone strikingly similar to Apple Inc's iPhone X (left).
HONG KONG: When Xiaomi first began making smartphones in 2011, it took many design cues – on both hardware and software – from Apple, so much so that the Chinese company was dismissed as an iPhone copycat maker by Western tech sites.
The stigma of this stuck with the company for years (at least in English-language media), even though Xiaomi had developed a nice identity of its own by 2014. It wasn’t until two years later, though, when Xiaomi wowed the industry with its pioneering bezel-less Mi Mix that it finally shed that label.
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