[zwieback]

These engineers must be from a different species - my experience with HW is that it's very hard to change anything in a week, especially when you're building 100000. Then again, they have everything under one roof so they can probably just walk over to the PCB designer and then walk some more to the guy setting up the manufacturing equipment, who has reels of every known component in stock.

I'm curious what they change but web searches just return the same three sound bites.

[bluedino]

Forbes has been hit and miss lately. For every good article they do about tech, they do some short, sensationalist 'China is taking over' piece like this.

[AJ007]

Comments from actual users of these phones would be far more informative. Karma to scott_karana for mentioning his experience with their version of Android.

[smith7018]

MIUI is actually a fairly well-known (and used) Android variant. Fun fact: it was supposedly based on iOS' looks but branched off into their own direction after ICS. Since then, iOS 7 was (comically, IMO) compared to MIUI and people believed Apple was inspired by it. It was even sold on a phone that was very iPhone-esque: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/xiaomi...

[gohrt]

Link to a good article in Forbes?

[schnarfnark]

  I'm curious what they change but web searches just return the same three sound bites.

Agreed. The article didn't exactly go into how they go about this.

On a different note, would this cause buyers to be less happy, knowing that there will be a better product in a week? Along the same lines as The Paradox of Choice[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...

[zwieback]

I think so, Apple has been successful with slow release cylces and making their stuff desirable. For lower cost consumer stuff it probably doesn't matter but these Chinese phones supposedly cost $300+ so I could see holding off a purchase to wait for improvements. Then again, I've had a Tracfone with a buggy LCD for years so I'm always waiting anyway.

[gbog]

One part of the answer is that they work in evenings and weekends, have I heard from former colleagues who now work at xiaomi.

[jonmrodriguez]

Like you said, it's all about having everything under one roof.

If you fab the PCBs yourself and pick and place the components yourself, you could make an electronics change in one day as long as you get the design right the first time and you had ordered the components in advance.

Changing the case shape would be harder to do fast, but could still happen in just 2-3 weeks if you have your tool-making and injection molding both in-house.

The reason anything takes longer for most companies is due to outsourcing, with all of its communications delays and shipping delays.