Xiaomi has been running a livestream online to demonstrate the battery life of its behemoth 6.44-inch Mi Max phablet -- and the show's been on for nearly two weeks now.
The Chinese phone giant launched the stream on May 10 at 4pm in the afternoon local time, right after it launched the device. It's got a Mi Max in the frame turned on with a SIM card in it, but on standby and not running any apps.
Each hour, the phone's screen is briefly turned on to show it's still running. Thanks to the phone's massive body, Xiaomi's been able to put a 4,850 mAh battery in it, which has been powering the device for a mind-boggling two weeks.
Crazy as that sounds, the stream, up on Chinese video site Bilibili, attracted over 20 million unique views by the weekend -- about 11 days into broadcast. And it's still going strong. Users tuning in continue to flood the chat box with a whizzing stream of remarks.
This is a capture of the chat box's comments coming in on Monday -- day 13:
And this is how the screen of the broadcast looks, with the comments overlaid:
The show has so far featured skits with actors lip syncing to a Chinese cartoon, streams of video game battles played live, and general talkshow segments with groups of people chatting.
Xiaomi has also given out Mi Max phones to commenters live on the show, which has no doubt only helped to fuel the noise. It's so far handed out 777 devices to viewers, the company said.
Xiaomi handed the duty of creating the liveshow over to Bilibili, the company told Mashable.
We wonder if Xiaomi knew it would be tough coming up with sufficient content for a nonstop show for as long as this, although it seems to have an inkling: it named the stream the "Xiaomi Max ultra enduring boring livestream", after all. (Its original name in Chinese: 小米Max超耐久无聊待机直播)
On Weibo, netizens seem to agree that the livestream is "boring". A user called Wang Dian said: "What a boring livestream, but there are 10,000 people tuned in right now."
Others seem to be impressed at Xiaomi's ability to keep the show going. "It's 'boring' but I'm watching every day," said a user called Mickey, posting from the Bilibili app over the weekend.
Several Chinese papers have commented on the livestream, with one saying it taps into the "emptiness" of present youth in the country who are addicted to their devices and online videos.
UPDATE: May 24, 2016, 6:23 p.m. SGT Updated with response from Xiaomi.
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Topics Xiaomi
