Mi Band 4 May Face Touch Screen Issues When In Contact With Water

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Xiaomi, earlier this month, came out with Mi Band 4 in China, and now the band is available in global markets as well. The fitness band managed to breach the 1 million sales mark even before hitting the global market. Some early buyers, however, are now reporting touch screen issues with Mi Band 4.

Xiaomi’s Mi Band 4 is an improvement over the Mi Band 3 and other similar fitness bands in the market as it can withstand water levels up to 50 meters. Users, however, say that though it can withstand water, its screen is registering water droplets as a touch event, notes a report from tech site PiunikaWeb.

Affected users have raised the touch screen issues with Mi Band 4 on Reddit.

“I have showered with it (as the manual says its [sic] allowed and wont [sic] damage it) and the problem is that the screen is registering every single drop falling on the screen as a touch or a swipe,” one user said.

The same user also highlighted a few more touch screen issues after he used the band when swimming. As per the user, he set the “pool swimming” option on the band, yet it proved to be a “nightmare to use it properly and navigate in the menus of the Band 4.”

Detailing the issues, the user said that launching the workout and selecting the pool length was difficult as the system went back with every touch to the screen. Even the “swipe to unlock” functionality was unable to prevent ghost touches on the Band 4.

Also, the band was unable to accurately identify the stroke type (butterfly, breaststroke, and more). Such issues are surprising and concerning as well, considering the Mi Band 4 features a six-axis high precision accelerometer for better swimming stroke recognition.

It appears that touch screen issues are common with Mi Bands. A few owners of the previous generation of Mi Bands talked about unoptimized touch sensitivity in their fitness bands with one user noting that it resulted in switching back to the factory settings on the device when underwater.

“Hopefully the swipe to unlock is improved. I’ve gone swimming with my mi band 3 and the false touches made it factory reset,” the owner said.

As of now, there are no comments from Xiaomi over the touch screen issues with Mi Band 4. Hopefully, it is not a hardware issue and a software update will be able to fix it.

Xiaomi recently announced that Mi Band 4 sold 1 million units in just eight days of its availability. The band was announced earlier this month, but it hit the store shelves in China on June 16. The Chinese company noted that at one point, the shipments for the band were more than 5,000 units, making it Xiaomi’s fastest-shipping wearable ever.

Xiaomi’s Mi Band 4 comes with an AMOLED display with a resolution of 120X240 pixels and 2.5D glass protection. The Mi Band 4 is not monochrome, but has a full color display. Thanks to the colored display, the band now offers up to 77 colorful watch faces.

The AMOLED panel displays text messages and voice calls received on the connected smartphone. Moreover, the band serves other purposes as well, such as switching a music track, offering live weather and stock updates and helping to find the phone as well. Also, the band can display QR codes, and that is why the Chinese company added a payment mode into the band.

Xiaomi claims that the band has a battery life of 15-20 days and is water resistant. Also, it features a physical activities tracker as well. Further, the band has a built-in microphone for voice commands. With the Mi Band 4, the Chinese company came out with a new Xiao AI voice assistant to control the tracker via voice commands.

Xiaomi’s Mi Band 4 succeeds last year’s Mi Band 3, which featured a 0.78-inch monochrome OLED display with a resolution of 80×128 pixels. The Mi Band 4 is priced at 169 Yuan (without NFC); the one with NFC comes in at 229 Yuan and the special Marvel Avenger’s package is CNY 349.

The closest rival to Mi Band 4 is the Galaxy Fit e, which can track over 90 kinds of activities, such as table tennis, swimming, and more. Other exercises it auto detects are running, gym equipment, walking, etc. Samsung’s band also supports sleep tracking and continuous heart-rate monitoring.

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