Xiaomi deletes poll which finds Android One more popular than MIUI

Xiaomi has deleted a Twitter poll which saw its MIUI skin lose a popularity contest to Android One (stock Android). The poll, which garnered 14,769 votes, was posted on February 8th and removed within the following two days (via Android Police).

While Xiaomi didn’t specifically announce what people were voting for, it clearly pitted its own MIUI 9 software skin against Android One, with the latter receiving 57% of the votes compared to the former’s 43%. We don’t know why the poll was removed, but we can speculate it’s because Xiaomi didn’t want to publicly show its own skin losing to Google’s unmodified OS.

While the results may have been disappointing for Xiaomi, they probably won’t surprise those familiar with the online Android community—stock Android would win in a poll against any third-party UI. How Xiaomi didn’t see that coming is odd, though it may have assumed those following it on Twitter would be among its most dedicated fans.

The deletion of the poll also seems petty when you look at how close it was—Xiaomi’s often maligned skin was only narrowly beaten by the favorite. What’s more, the Chinese manufacturer offers an Android One phone, the Xiaomi Mi A1 which launched last November; this could have been read as Xiaomi making moves to deliver what its community wants (or even trying to understand the community better for future products).

Sure, websites might have picked it up and poked fun at Xiaomi, but it wasn’t a catastrophic defeat. Now that Xiaomi has deleted it, however, it stands to draw unnecessary attention and made the company look silly. Where do you stand on the matter? Let us know in the comments.