MIUI is the oldest surviving Android shell. For those who don’t know, this is Xiaomi’s first product. Despite being on the market for years, it doesn’t offer support for longer than newcomers like Samsung One UI. In any case, the company has now properly optimized the software for individual devices, especially flagship and mid-range models. It even lets you uninstall more system apps than any Android skin.

But now, for some reason, Xiaomi has decided to install not one, but three browsers on some phones. Yesterday I manually installed MIUI 14 on a Redmi Note 12 Pro Plus review unit I borrowed from Xiaomi India. I was surprised that the software is still based on Android 12.

However, I was more surprised to see the removable Opera browser in the app drawer. Earlier today, I came across this Xiaomiui article that cited Kacper Skrzypek as the source. It looks like Xiaomi made a deal with Opera to install the browser on their phones. Interestingly, this browser is limited to certain devices (mostly budget and mid-range models) running Indian and global versions of MIUI.

Therefore, Xiaomi users in India now have to deal with two pre-installed browsers (Chrome and Opera) on their smartphones that cannot be uninstalled. On the other hand, the situation is slightly different for “Global” users, because they get three browsers, the third is Mi Browser. But Opera browser can be uninstalled in this version of MIUI. Hence, the uninstallable Opera browser seems to be replacing Mi Browser in India, where Mi Browser was banned in the country in 2020.