Reviewed by Eric Moore, Editor-in-Chief XOMI AI launched quietly in early 2026 as a story-first AI companion app. Less “talk to a virtual girlfriend,” more “step into a branching narrative with a character who remembers your last chapter.” A solo developer in Ho Chi Minh City built it, and the app ships in 10 languages with 190+ pre-built characters, an Adventure Mode game master, and a memory system that’s supposed to compound across sessions. It’s also a clean case study in how to read a brand-new app’s paperwork. The privacy policy lists chat data, push tokens, and six third-party processors. The Google Play Data Safety page says “no data collected.” Both can’t be true, and that gap shapes the rest of this review.
What XOMI AI Actually Is (and Isn’t)
First, a name problem. Search “XOMI AI” on Google and almost every result is Xiaomi, the Chinese consumer electronics brand behind phones, smart glasses, and the MiMo AI model. XOMI (xomi.app) has nothing to do with Xiaomi (mi.com). Different company, different country. This review is about the AI companion app.
The product ships as “XOMI – AI Chat Companions” on the iOS App Store (id6760554737) and as app.xomi.xomi_app on Google Play. The developer of record is Xuyen Ngo Thanh, listed on the Play Store under the legal entity “NGO THANH XUYEN” at a residential address in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Public install footprint is small: Play Store sits in the “100+” downloads bucket, and the iOS listing shows “not enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.”
The release cadence is wild. Per the iOS update history, XOMI shipped from v1.94 in late March 2026 to v1.195.0 by May 3, 2026. That’s more than 50 versions in roughly six weeks. The stack listed in the privacy policy reads exactly like one developer wiring up the cheapest, fastest things that work: Railway for hosting, Resend for transactional email, Sentry for error monitoring, Firebase Cloud Messaging for push, Amazon S3 for avatar storage, Google Sign-In for OAuth.
That context matters. XOMI isn’t a venture-funded competitor to Character.AI. It’s an indie launch, with the upsides and the risks that come with that.
The Story-First Model: How XOMI’s Interactive Fiction Works
XOMI’s headline differentiator is the shape of the experience itself. Most AI companion apps optimize for chat: pick a persona, talk, repeat. XOMI optimizes for narrative arcs. For the full evidence trail behind these scores, see the XOMI AI safety rating.
The catalog of 190+ pre-built characters is organized around story situations, not personality types. A character isn’t just “shy librarian” or “cool roommate.” Each one shows up with a setup, a complication, and a few directions the conversation can take. Adventure Mode adds what the app calls “Game Masters,” branching scenes where the AI plays both the character and the narrator, the way a tabletop GM would.
Memory and affinity work as a progression. Ten named levels climb from Stranger up to Eternal Bond, and the app says memory compounds across sessions, so a detail you drop in chapter two can resurface weeks later. AI image generation in six art styles (anime, painterly, photo-real, and others) ties visuals to story moments. Recent ship items: Character Quality Check and Remix Characters.
The closest spiritual relatives are AI Dungeon and NovelAI. Inside the companion-app space, Talkie is the nearest sibling, since it also treats characters as story arcs instead of fixed personas. Character.AI sits further out: it’s chat-first with optional roleplay. Replika is further still, built around a single long-term companion.
One caveat. We can’t independently verify the memory claim. There are zero public user reviews on any surface, so the only evidence that memory actually compounds is the developer’s own marketing copy and an iOS release note confirming the feature ships. Shipping isn’t the same as working. If you’re trying XOMI specifically for the memory, treat it as an experiment, not a promise.
The Vietnamese Folklore Catalog (and Why It Matters)
XOMI’s catalog leans hard into Vietnamese folklore and culturally specific archetypes. The character pool includes revenge plots, “rebirth” characters whose backstories reference a prior death, and affair narratives. That’s genuinely distinctive. No major Western AI companion app has anything like this depth in Vietnamese narrative tradition.
For a Vietnamese-language reader, that matters. Native-first language support always beats translated-from-English support. For an English speaker curious about non-Western story conventions, XOMI has archetypes Character.AI (English-first) and Talkie (Chinese-first) don’t replicate.
The flip side: the app supports 10 languages, but nothing public describes whether moderation works the same in each. The Terms of Service prohibits “bypassing safety filters” without saying how those filters work in any language, much less across all 10. Mature Vietnamese-language themes get whatever moderation exists for English. Whether the floor is actually the same floor isn’t verified anywhere.
That uncertainty doesn’t erase the cultural-depth advantage. It does mean a parent or moderator looking at XOMI shouldn’t assume English-tuned content controls extend cleanly into the Vietnamese catalog.
The Play Store Data Safety Misdeclaration
This is the single biggest transparency gap in the evidence, and a major reason for the safety grade. Three separate pages describe what XOMI collects, and they don’t agree.
The Google Play Data Safety section says, in the developer’s own words, that “this app doesn’t collect or share any user data.” The privacy policy on xomi.app/privacy, last updated March 9, 2026, lists email, hashed password, OAuth tokens, chat messages, device info, push notification tokens, and analytics, and names six third-party processors: Google Sign-In, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Resend, Amazon S3, Sentry, and the iOS and Play Store payment systems. The iOS App Privacy section declares Email Address, tracking Identifiers, Device ID for advertising and analytics, Product Interaction, and Crash Data. The iOS labels and the privacy policy describe the same app and broadly agree with each other. The Google Play declaration says the same app collects nothing. Both can’t be true, and the Play Store version is the surface most Android users see first.
Our read: this is a Play Console oversight by a solo developer, not active deception. The legal and trust impact is the same. The privacy surface most Android users see first is wrong. If you install XOMI on Android, trust the privacy policy as the binding description and treat “no data collected” as a misdeclaration that needs fixing. The fix on the developer’s side is one form away: update the Play Console Data Safety entries to match what the privacy policy already says.
The Age-Rating Mismatch
Three age numbers describe the same product. Play Store rates XOMI Teen (13+). The iOS App Store rates it 16+ (“Frequent Profanity or Crude Humor; Contains Advertising; Contains User-Generated Content”). The Terms of Service requires users to be at least 13, with under-18 users needing “parental or guardian consent.” There is no in-product age check. There is no parental consent flow described anywhere public. There is no documented parental control surface. Any teenager who knows a plausible birth year can pass.
The iOS rating is the more conservative number, and it’s conservative for a reason. Apple’s rules push AI-character apps with profanity and user-generated content to 16+ by default. The Play Store rating is the one most teens globally see, since Android skews younger in many markets. None of the mature Vietnamese folklore content (revenge, affair, simulated-death rebirth) is gated by user age inside the app.
For parents, the practical answer is simple. Treat XOMI as a 16+ app, regardless of which store badge you see. Without parental controls or age verification, don’t install it for under-16s. The ToS quietly allowing 13-year-olds “with parental consent” isn’t the same as the app actually checking for that consent.
Pricing Inconsistencies and What You Actually Pay
Three different prices exist for the same Pro tier across XOMI’s surfaces.
- Landing page (xomi.app): $7.99/mo
- iOS in-app purchase listing: XOMI Pro $7.99
- Play Store description body: $4.99/mo
- iOS description body: $4.99/mo (contradicting its own IAP listing)
The $7.99 iOS IAP is the binding price for Apple users. On Android, the binding price is whatever the Play Store IAP screen shows inside the purchase sheet, and we can’t inspect that without an account. The store description body on either platform is marketing copy, not the contract.
Stamina IAP packs are consistent across surfaces: $0.99 for 50 Stamina, $1.99 for 150, $4.99 for 500, $9.99 for 1500, and $19.99 for 5000. The free-tier message limit also drifts between surfaces: 30 messages per day on the landing page, 40 messages per day in the store descriptions.
Best guess: a recent price change that hasn’t propagated to every surface yet. That tracks with the 50-versions-in-six-weeks shipping cadence. So the practical move is to check the price in your store’s IAP screen before you subscribe. Don’t trust the landing page or the store description body. Whatever Apple or Google show you at the moment of purchase is the price you’ll actually pay.
Solo-Developer Reality: Bus Factor and Support
XOMI is built and maintained by one named person at a residential address in Vietnam. The vendor stack (Railway, Resend, Sentry, Firebase) reads like one developer’s pragmatic shortlist. That has product implications cutting both ways.
The upside is velocity. More than 50 versions in three weeks during the spring 2026 cycle. Bugs get fixed fast. New features ship weekly. Ad-tech overhead is minimal, with no advertising partners disclosed in the privacy policy, and Android permissions stay tight (no location, no contacts, no SMS, no phone state). HIBP returns zero known breaches for xomi.app. No regulatory record.
The downside is concentration risk. Bus factor of one. If the developer stops shipping, the app stops. The published support contact is a personal Gmail address (xuyenthanhngo@gmail.com) listed on the Play Store developer profile. No documented incident-response plan. No published security review. No crisis-response copy in the privacy policy or the Terms of Service. Every data-handling decision, including the Play Store misdeclaration, gets made by one person under time pressure.
Solo-developer apps are a legitimate slice of the AI companion ecosystem, and they often produce more honest products than venture-backed competitors. They also concentrate risk in one person’s discipline and bandwidth. Weighing XOMI against Character.AI or Replika is partly weighing one person against a funded team.
Safety Score Breakdown: Why D and 32
The widget at the top of this page shows D / 32 / Red. Here’s the plain-language reasoning.
XOMI AI earns D / 32 in the CompanionWise 23-dimension safety review because three categories drag the score hard. Age verification fails: the Terms of Service sets a 13+ floor with no enforcement, the store ratings disagree (Teen vs 16+), and no parental-control surface exists. Transparency fails: the Google Play Data Safety page declares “no data collected” while the privacy policy lists chat messages and six third-party processors; AI-training opt-out is silent; chat-data-at-rest encryption is not stated. Safety documentation is absent: no crisis-response policy, no multilingual moderation detail despite 10-language coverage, and no in-product reporting flow. Counterweights pull the score off the floor: minimal Android permissions (no location, contacts, or SMS access), zero known breaches in the Have I Been Pwned database for xomi.app, no advertising partners disclosed in the privacy policy, no regulatory enforcement record at the FTC or in Vietnam, and a plain “AI characters are fictional and their responses should not be taken as professional advice” disclosure in the ToS.
Why this isn’t an F: no evidence of active harm. The grade reflects “the floor for an app whose safety paperwork is incomplete and inconsistent,” not “this app has hurt people.” That distinction matters when you’re deciding whether to install. The recommended posture is Tier C, Cautious. Adults only, eyes open about the gaps. Not a “do not install” verdict. Not for under-16s, and not for anyone in mental-health crisis.
Experience Score Breakdown: Why 50 and Fair
The experience widget shows 50/100, fair, with a low-confidence flag. The flag is the important part.
Zero public reviews exist on iOS, Google Play, Reddit, Trustpilot, X, YouTube, Quora, Product Hunt, or AlternativeTo. The score comes from product-surface evidence only: declared features, release-notes cadence, pricing structure, language coverage, and visible product positioning. From that surface, the strengths are real: shipping velocity, feature breadth (Adventure Mode, image generation, 10-language support, character variety), and a story-first frame that separates XOMI from generic chat clones.
What we don’t know yet: actual conversation quality, whether the memory system delivers on the marketing claim, breakage rate, billing transparency in practice, and support responsiveness. The “what players say” testimonials on the landing page (Sarah T., Mike R., Yuki K., shown with DiceBear-generated avatars) are first-party marketing copy and don’t count as evidence.
We’ll re-score XOMI’s experience grade once at least 30 public user reviews exist across two or more surfaces. The “we don’t know yet” disclosure is the editorial signal here. XOMI is too new to score with high confidence, and we’re not pretending otherwise.
How XOMI Compares: Character.AI, Talkie, Replika, Kindroid
The comparison cards above this article show the score grid against four established apps. Here’s the narrative reading.
Versus Character.AI, XOMI is more explicitly story-first. Adventure Mode and branching plots replace open-ended chat as the default mode. XOMI’s safety paperwork is far less mature than Character.AI’s. Character.AI offers parental controls. XOMI doesn’t.
Versus Talkie, the closest spiritual competitor, the two apps split on polish vs. cultural depth. Talkie has more characters, a larger install base, and clearer Play Store data declarations. XOMI has the Vietnamese folklore catalog and a story-arc framing Talkie can’t match. Adventure Mode’s game-master mechanics are more developed on XOMI.
Versus Replika, the categories barely overlap. Replika is the single-companion long-term-relationship app. XOMI is the many-character story-first app. They do different jobs, and they aren’t really substitutes for each other.
Versus Kindroid, Kindroid wins on transparency and memory architecture. Kindroid is more privacy-forward, with on-device options and explicit memory management. XOMI’s memory claim is similar in spirit but unverified, and the Play Store data declaration disagrees with its own privacy policy.
The cleanest read: XOMI is a category sibling to most of the established field, not a head-to-head competitor. Its closest genuine competitors are Talkie inside the companion-app space, and AI Dungeon and NovelAI (outside our review set) in the interactive-fiction space.
Frequently Asked Questions About XOMI AI
What is XOMI AI?
Per the iOS App Store listing, XOMI is “AI Chat Companions,” a story-first interactive-fiction companion app from solo developer Xuyen Ngo Thanh in Ho Chi Minh City. It ships 190+ characters, Adventure Mode, AI image generation, and a memory system across 10 languages. It is unrelated to Xiaomi, the consumer electronics brand at mi.com.
Is XOMI AI safe?
CompanionWise Safety Index: XOMI AI D / 32 / Red. Adults only, with awareness. Per Google Play’s Data Safety page, the developer says the app collects no data, while the published privacy policy lists chat messages, device info, and six third-party processors. The gap, plus the absence of age verification, drives the cautious rating.
How much does XOMI AI cost?
Per the iOS in-app purchase listing, XOMI Pro is $7.99 per month. The Play Store description body says $4.99 per month, and the iOS description body also says $4.99, contradicting its own IAP listing. The binding price is whatever your store’s purchase sheet shows. Confirm before subscribing.
Is XOMI AI free?
Yes. According to the Google Play store description, free users get 40 messages per day with full access to all 190+ characters and the story library. The xomi.app landing page lists 30 messages per day on the free tier, a small disclosure inconsistency. The Pro tier raises the daily message cap and adds longer memory.
What is the difference between XOMI AI and Character.AI?
XOMI is story-first, with Adventure Mode game masters and branching plots organized around narrative arcs. Character.AI is chat-first, with personas users can talk to in open-ended fashion. Character.AI offers parental controls and clearer data disclosures; XOMI offers Vietnamese folklore depth and a game-master mode Character.AI does not match.