Considering it was only founded in 2010, Xiaomi's rise has been meteoric. It's now the fourth largest smartphone maker in the world, leading the field at home in China and in the second largest market, India. This year has seen the company's expansion into Western Europe, where it's already reached number four in sales despite only selling in a handful of countries so far. That position is set to be bolstered by Xiaomi's official launch in the UK.

At an event today at the historic Barbican Centre in London, Senior Vice President Wang Xiang and Director of Product Marketing Donovan Sung took to the stage to introduce Xiaomi to the UK and unveil some products. The most interesting of those was the debut of the Mi 8 Pro (Explorer Edition) outside China.

It's a fitting flagship to bring to the UK, with pricing seemingly designed to take on the OnePlus 6T. For the same money, just £499.99, you get many of the same specs and features — Snapdragon 845, in-display fingerprint scanner, dual rear cameras. In addition, the Mi 8 Pro also has IR face unlocking and 8GB of RAM as standard (the 6T is 6GB for the same price). All of that before even mentioning the semi-transparent back with "ornamental" internals.

The product with the second-most stage time today was the Band 3, a fitness tracker with an impressive feature set and incredibly low price. It has a 0.78-inch OLED display that can display notifications, should last at least 20 days on a charge, and has a heart rate sensor — all for just £26.99. If you buy one of the first 10,000 on sale in the UK, you'll only pay £19.99. Also, in what could be a popular Christmas present, there's a smart living bundle consisting of the Band 3 and the budget Redmi 6A costing just £99.99.

With less fanfare, Xiaomi also introduced a plethora of other smart home products, from scales to desk lamps, and there was even a "one more thing" offering: the £399.99 Mi Electric Scooter. Numerous retail partners will be selling all of these products, such as Three for the phones, and including other big players like Amazon, Argos, and John Lewis. To really engage with the Mi-fans, however, the company is also opening a flagship Mi Store in the Westfield, White City, on November 18th. There will be plenty of promotions and events in the near future, so it's worth following Xiaomi's social channels to see what's coming up.

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