Xiaomi's rumoured $65 (Rs. 4000) phone has purportedly been spotted in an image flaunting a design similar to the Redmi 2.
First spotted by MyDrivers.com, the image was posted on China's Twitter equivalent Weibo showing the back panel of the handset. The unnamed Mi smartphone sports a design similar to Xiaomi Redmi 2 (Review | Pictures). The primary camera accompanied by an LED flash and speaker grille can be seen in the image; though the Mi logo, seen in almost all Xiaomi devices, is missing hinting that the device pictured might be a prototype.
In-line with an earlier report, the handset is said to include a Leadcore chipset, instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC.
The Chinese company has been rumoured to be working on an affordable smartphone (unnamed as of now) priced at as low as CNY 399 (approximately $65 or Rs. 4,000). The budget Xiaomi smartphone has been said to feature LTE support, apart from an HD (720p) display and pack 1GB of RAM. The Leadcore chipset was said to be LC1860, built on 28nm fabrication processor and utilise 2GHz Cortex-A7 cores (no word on the number of cores) alongside a Mali T628 GPU.
As of now, other details about the $65 Xiaomi smartphone are limited.
A report from December citing Xiaomi's Global Vice President, Hugo Barra poured water on plans for a sub-Rs. 5,000 smartphone. According to Barra, industry conditions don't make it possible for the company to manufacture a sub-Rs. 5,000 smartphone that would deliver a "good consumer experience."
Earlier this month, Xiaomi unveiled a special edition of the Mi Note with a bamboo material back panel, the Xiaomi Mi Note Natural Bamboo Edition. Priced at CNY 2,299 (roughly Rs. 23,000), the Xiaomi Mi Note Natural Bamboo Edition would be available in China from Tuesday.
Xiaomi is set to increase its market share as 4G LTE vendor with the newly-launched Redmi 2 4G budget smartphone.
Chinese handset maker Xiaomi surpassed global smartphone giants Samsung and Apple in terms of market share to become India’s top 4G handset seller in January this year, CyberMedia Research said today.
Earlier this month, the market research firm had said that the iPhone maker emerged as the largest 4G LTE device vendor in the country in October-December 2014.
As per the latest CyberMedia Research (CMR) data, Xiaomi leads the 4G LTE device market with 30.8 per cent market share in January followed by Apple (23.8 per cent), Samsung (12.1 per cent), HTC (10 per cent) and Micromax (8.3 per cent).
In October-December 2014 quarter, over one million 4G devices, including smartphones, tablets and data cards were shipped to the Indian market.
Apple led with a 45 per cent market share at the end of October-December quarter in 2014, followed by HTC at 19 per cent and Samsung at 16 per cent, it had said.
Overall in handsets in January 2015, including feature phones, smartphones, 3G and 4G mobile phones, Samsung led the pack with 17.3 per cent market share followed by Lava (11.9 per cent), Microsoft (10.3 per cent), Micromax (9.7 per cent) and Intex (8.5 per cent), CMR said.
Samsung was also the top smartphone vendor in India with 28.8 per cent market share in January followed by Micromax (12.1 per cent), Intex (9.7 per cent), Lava (9.4 per cent) and Microsoft (4.5 per cent), it added.
Overall, feature phones accounted for 66.05 per cent of the handsets shipped in January 2015, followed by smartphones at 33.95 per cent, CMR said.
Xiaomi India has announced the price and availability of the 64GB variant of its much-awaited Mi 4 smartphone in India, the company's 2014 flagship. The 64GB variant has been priced at Rs. 4,000 more than its 16GB counterpart, at Rs. 23,999, and will be made available on February 24.
Making the announcement on the Mi India Facebook page, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer says sales of the Xiaomi Mi 4 (Review | Images) 64GB variant begin on February 24, which also happens to be a Tuesday - the traditional day for Xiaomi flash sales in India.
The announcement was made on Monday, just ahead of the company's first flash sale for the 16GB variant of the Mi 4 smartphone on Tuesday. Xiaomi had late last monthlaunched the Mi 4 in India, and at that time had indicated that the 64GB variant would be coming soon, but had failed to provide a timeline.
With its rapid growth and almost cult status, startup Xiaomi is already one of the best known smartphone makers globally, despite only having made its devices available in select countries till date. However, the smartphone maker with its Mi 4 offering certainly has a difficult job cut out for it in India, taking on another startup that is offering top-end specifications at an affordable price - OnePlus, with its 64GB One smartphone priced at Rs. 21,999.
OnePlus is certainly aware of this, and announced that the first open sale of the One smartphone in India will occur on the same day as the first flash sale of the 16GB Mi 4 - Tuesday.
Unlike Xiaomi, OnePlus decided not to make the 16GB Silk White variant of the OnePlus One (Review | Pictures) available in India, despite the fact it could have offered the smartphone at a much lower price point and thus drawn more eyeballs. Perhaps the startup correctly estimated the tech-savvy nature of the Indian market, judging by the response the announcement of the 16GB Mi 4 has had, with several users favourably comparing the OnePlus One to the Xiaomi Mi 4.
Xiaomi's pricing of the 64GB variant at Rs. 23,999 is also questionable, essentially providing a larger 64GB flash memory chip instead of the 16GB chip for Rs. 4,000 more - quite a premium for just 48GB of ubiquitous storage. This also prices the smartphone significantly higher than the OnePlus One, a strange move considering the smartphones are nearly equal in terms of specifications. Xiaomi arguably enjoys a more famous brand name however, though with the company's value for money philosophy, it makes little sense it has decided a levy a premium for the brand.
After cementing itself in the sub-Rs. 10,000 segment with a number of phone launches, Xiaomi seems ready to take a leap. Its latest phone, the Mi 4, will be its most expensive yet - by quite a margin. Buyers have been lining up faithfully every week in hopes of snagging one of a very limited supply of phones, often without ever having seen or felt one, but that fervour has been based on the fact that prices were shockingly low. The big question now is whether Xiaomi's brand value will carry over to a device that costs over twice as much as the Redmi Note and thrice as much as the Redmi 1S.
The highly regarded Xiaomi Mi 3 (Review | Photos) is not available anymore, but the Mi 4 is more of an upgrade than a replacement. It comes to India many months after its launch back home in China, though we can't really call it dated given its top-tier specifications. Let's see how the Xiaomi Mi 4 stacks up against its competition, and whether getting one will be worth all the trouble flash sales involve.
Look and feel The Xiaomi Mi 4 doesn't look anything like the Mi 3 did. It has a far more traditional shape, and borrows heavily from both Apple and Samsung's design languages. The screen dominates the front, with very little space wasted around it. The area above the screen is rather crowded, with a shiny silver Mi logo and sensor window on one side of the earpiece, with the front-facing camera on the other. The capacitive navigation buttons on the bottom have white backlighting, and a tiny status LED is hidden beneath them - so much so that you'd miss it if you weren't specifically looking for it.
The sides of the Mi 4 are flat, and a shiny stainless steel rim runs around the entire phone. It looks a lot like Apple's iPhone 5 design, but also incorporates Samsung's current antenna cutout style. The rim protrudes a little and you can feel it scratching your ear when you hold up this phone to talk.
The rear is not removable and so the battery isn't accessible. There's a slot on the left for a Micro-SIM card, but the microSD slot has been sacrificed for the sake of design. The power button on the right is below the volume rocker, making it a bit too low to be reached comfortably. The 3.5mm headset socket is on top, with an Infrared LED next to it. On the bottom, there's a speaker grille and the Micro-USB port, which, like on all other Xiaomi phones, is confusingly rectangular in shape.
The camera and flash on the rear are shaped and placed much like Samsung does on its current models. The white plastic has a subtle pattern, which is again a familiar Samsung touch. There's another shiny Mi logo lower down.
The combination of milky white plastic and shiny metal isn't especially appealing, and this is Xiaomi's first phone in India that doesn't look a lot more expensive than it is. Notably, the specifications do not mention Gorilla Glass or any other structural reinforcement. That said, build quality seems solid.
Specifications and software Xiaomi's entire identity is based around stuffing high-end specifications into phones with low-end prices, and the Mi 4 is no exception. There's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 with four CPU cores running at 2.5GHz and an Adreno 330 GPU. There is also a very generous 3GB of RAM. The model currently available in India has 16GB of storage space and no microSD slot - a 64GB model might come in later, though the price difference is unknown.
The screen is a 5-inch full-HD 1080x1920-pixel IPS panel - thankfully not too large. The battery comes in at 3,080mAh, and the front and rear cameras have 13-megapixel and 8-megapixel Sony sensors respectively. You can capture 4K videos at up to 30fps with the rear camera. Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0 are complemented by Infrared and A-GPS.
Our review unit came running Xiaomi's MIUI 6 interface on top of Android 4.4.4. It looks great on the high-resolution screen but definitely has its quirks. Most importantly, it doesn't have a separate homescreen and app drawer - while some prefer the simplicity, others would much rather be able to organise their widgets and app icons. The icons are all custom, and text is crisp, but on the smaller side.
Several things have been customised, which are not necessarily improvements. Options in the Settings app have been somewhat reorganised, and it takes an extra step to get to common things such as the display and battery sections. The battery indicator doesn't clearly show when the phone is or isn't charging. The camera shortcut on the lockscreen disappears off the right edge but to launch it you need to swipe left. The quick shortcuts panel in the notifications shade isn't too well designed or easy to get to. There are also iOS-inspired flourishes all around, such as red notification badges on icons, the appearance of folders, and the task switcher.
Xiaomi offers a huge selection of themes including ones with Indian imagery. You can change the system font, and there are quite a few practical modern typefaces to choose from. You can also change the behaviour of the notification LED. Xiaomi has integrated audio EQ settings customised for different types of earphones including its own Piston headset.
Fleksy and Swiftkey come preinstalled. There's also the Facebook app, WPS office, and a Security app that offers an overview of data usage, battery performance and app permissions, and lets you block contacts too. Hidden away at the bottom of a "Tools" folder is the Mi Remote app that lets you control appliances using the Infrared LED. Only TVs and set-top boxes are supported at the moment, and an Internet connection is required for setup. It worked with a Samsung TV, but Indian set-top box brands weren't even listed as options. The app has a very iOS 7-inspired look, down to the animations which look like the iOS task switcher.
Performance While there's a lot of powerful hardware under the hood, one thing that frustrated us was MIUI's slow animations. It felt as though simple things such as opening a folder or switching apps took way too long. Apps themselves ran very snappily and we had no problems there. Interestingly, the task switcher showed only 1.8GB of RAM available out of the device's 3GB, even when no apps were running in the background.
Benchmark test results were predictably high. Xiaomi has incorporated a "Performance mode" which can be found in the settings, but a dialog popped up each time we launched a benchmark app asking if we wanted to switch out of "Balanced mode". For the purposes of testing, we stuck to the default Balanced mode.
AnTuTu and Quadrant reported scores of 32,264 and 15,344 respectively, which are both pretty good but not as good as those of the marginally more expensive OnePlus One (Review | Photos), or for that matter, the equivalently priced Lenovo Vibe X2(Review | Photos) with its octa-core MediaTek MT6595M SoC. Graphics scores were also pretty good, with 28fps in GFXBench and 14,585 points in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited.
Video samples played without any problem. Thankfully, the screen isn't too reflective and looks great even in sunlight. Sound through the bottom-firing speaker is loud, but thin and scratchy. We found that the rear and the right edge got a bit warm when we ran tests or played games for a while. The battery lasted a respectable 10 hours, 4 minutes in our video loop test.
The Mi 3's camera was one of its less appealing features, but things are definitely looking better with the Mi 4. Most of the photos we managed to take in daylight came out very well, with accurate colouring and subtle details intact. Low light performance was weak, though, and sharpness definitely suffered as a result of longer exposure time. It took two or three attempts to get a great shot at night. Videos are taken at 720p by default.
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The camera app has several neat features including optional manual controls for ISO, exposure time, white balance and ISO. You can change the metering mode, image and video quality, and frame aspect ratio. There's also a neat Refocus mode that takes multiple shots (if you hold the phone really steady) and lets you tap to choose which areas should be in focus long after the shots have been taken.
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Verdict The Xiaomi Mi 4 is a great phone for its price, but it isn't as decisively ahead of the curve as its predecessors have been. It's certainly not perfect, but it will suit most people's needs just fine. Still, the market has somewhat adapted to the Chinese upstart's disruptions, and there are alternatives that offer similar value for money if you feel as though the UI, storage space or looks aren't enough for you. We'd most likely hold off till the 64GB model is launched - it will be interesting to see how that compares to the OnePlus One in terms of pricing.
The price tag of Rs. 19,999 is ambitious for Xiaomi but we're sure people will still line up for hours to buy how many ever units are put up for sale now that the company has established its name in India. As has been the case with previous models, there's no telling how many units will be sold and for how long. Hopefully, plans to sell the device through channels other than Flipkart's flash sales will help alleviate the mass frustration that arises from each weekly event.
With even more premium devices such as the Mi Note coming in later this year, the Mi 4 will help Xiaomi break away from its ultra-low-price image. Competition is always good for buyers and so we welcome responses from the world's big Android manufacturers.
From CNET Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun holding up the new Xiaomi Note.Aloysius Low/CNET
BEIJING -- The flagship Xiaomi Note was announced today when CEO Lei Jun took to the stage in the Chinese capital.
The new Note is not to be confused with the company's budget friendly line, the RedMi Note, nor the offerings from the South Korean electronics giant Samsung. The new phablet, if Lei Jun is to be believed, is set to go head-to-head with Apple's iPhone 6 Plus.
The company is betting that consumers in markets such as India who want phones similar in quality and size to the 6 Plus will opt for the Note instead.
The Xiaomi Note packs a 5.7-inch Full HD display and weighs just 161g. It sports a curved glass front and rear. Xiaomi also claims it has a patent for the rear 13-megapixel camera -- and unlike the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, the thinner Note doesn't have a protruding carriage for the rear shooter. It also has optical image stabilisation.
For the selfie-loving crowd, Xiaomi has taken a page out of the HTC One M8's book. The front camera uses a 4-megapixel sensor, which sports the same 2µm pixel size. This should make for better-looking selfies, especially in low-light conditions.
Xiaomi says the phone will retail at 2,299 RMB, which converts to about US$260, £245 and AU$450. It's definitely not as cheap as the company's other products, and Xiaomi says it's due to the high manufacturing costs of the phone.
"Xiaomi 'going phablet' with the Note wasn't a surprise," says IDC analyst Bryan Ma. "It was an obvious gap in their portfolio that in was only being serviced by a low-end RedMi Note before. High-end users need their phablets too."
Power users who want something even more powerful can look forward to the the Mi Note Pro, which will be one of the first few phones to sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor, 4GB RAM and a 2K display. It will retail close to Xiaomi's manufacturing cost at 3,299 RMB -- this converts roughly to $530, £350 and $AU$650.
We'll have a hands-on with the Xiaomi Note soon, so be sure to check back in a bit.
China's Xiaomi delivers a metallic smartphone for very little cash
The GoodXiaomi's flagship phone has a beautiful aluminum-magnesium chassis, solid build quality, powerful performance, and a great UI for a relatively low price.
The Bad The smartphone lacks LTE connectivity, and a microSD card slot means you'll only ever have 16GB of onboard storage.
The Bottom LineXiaomi's Mi 3 is a showcase of how Chinese phonemakers can create quality hardware without breaking the bank. If you don't need 4G LTE, and you can get hold of it, this is one of the best smartphones you can buy in its price range.
Xiaomi isn't quite a household name outside of China yet, but that's just for what Hugo Barra, former Googler and now Xiaomi's global VP, is aiming. And if the Xiaomi Mi 3 is any indication of the price and build quality of the company's future phones, Xiaomi's competitors should start paying attention.
Announced last year, the Mi 3 is quite the looker -- it comes with an aluminum-magnesium chassis and has a beautiful face with a 5-inch full-HD display covered in Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It's hard to deny the value that this phone represents -- it costs just $270 (£160, AU$290) off-contract -- and once you get your hands on one, you'll be impressed with the build quality and feel.
Currently it's widely available in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore only, but the 3G phone will work globally if you can import one. Online retailers in the UK do stock the phone, but at a premium -- you'll be lucky to find it for less than £220. In the United States, expect to pay at least $375 from online retailers.
Without 4G LTE support, however, the Mi 3 isn't meant to go head-to-head with this year's flagship smartphones from Chinese brands such as OnePlus or Oppo -- instead it is a great alternative if you only need 3G and don't want to renew your contract or pay through the roof for a powerful new phone. Bear in mind, though, the Mi 3 is almost a year old, and a new, refreshed model is likely around the corner.
Design
Since the first Mi Phone released three years ago, Xiaomi has gained a reputation for making good-quality Android devices, and the Mi 3 is no exception. I'm impressed with how great it looks and its build quality. The phone really feels like the 5-inch Android phone Apple would make -- if Apple made 5-inch Android phones.
Aloysius Low/CNET
Compared with other devices from China that tend to have plastic builds, the Xiaomi Mi 3 stands out. It looks like an expensive phone -- and it feels like one. The designers paid attention to the details of the construction, which you can see easily from the machined speaker holes to the seamless joining of the plastic but metallic-looking body and glass front.
There has been much talk of how Xiaomi is trying to copy Apple's approach to industrial design, but the result speaks for itself. I would argue the Mi 3 also rather resembles something from Nokia at its best.
Weighing just 145g (5.2 ounces), you'd expect the phone to be heavier given its plastic body. The Mi 3 is light in your hand, however, and comfortable to grip.
Located at the bottom are the aforementioned speaker holes, as well as a Micro-USB port. On the right side, you'll find the conveniently placed power button, with the volume rockers a little higher up. At the top are the speaker jack and the SIM-card slot. The Mi 3 takes a big, old-fashioned SIM card, since it comes from China (where such cards are still used), so you'll need an adapter if you're switching from a micro- or nano-SIM.
Aloysius Low/CNET
When powered off, the display is a uniform sheet of glass, with the Xiaomi logo at the top left corner. When you do turn on the screen, however, you'll find the touch-sensitive menu buttons in their usual place below the screen. Packing 1,920x1,080 pixels, the Mi 3's screen is capable of handling full-HD video.
Internally, the phone packs a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 80 processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of onboard storage. The phone has no microSD card slot, and while there's a 64GB version of the phone available, it's not sold outside of China. Connectivity-wise, the smartphone packs all you need to connect to any 3G GSM network around the world, but no 4G LTE. It does have NFC, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.
Aloysius Low/CNET
Finally on the rear, you'll find the 13-megapixel camera as well as a dual-LED flash. Xiaomi's attention to detail is also present here: you'll find that instead of making the camera hole a circle like most other smartphones, the company took time to make it square -- just a cool piece of design.
Software and features
MIUI is a very pretty UI with plenty of features.Screenshot by Aloysius Low/CNET
One of the biggest draws of Xiaomi's Mi 3 is that it runs the company's own version of Android, called MIUI. You can actually download this and install it on your own phone, but Xiaomi's devices all come running this out of the box. As you can see from my screenshots, it comes with all Google's mobile software, including the Play Store.
I've talked about the MIUI in my earlier review of the budget Redmi, but here's a quick recap on the notable features of the OS.
First up is themes -- MIUI has a powerful theming function capable of changing the look of the UI as well as add custom effects. Its Ferrari theme plays a loud engine roar when you unlock the phone, for example, as well as changing the colors of the UI to a bright metallic red.
MIUI also makes it easy for you to move apps around, you can do a pinch-out action to show the home screens, flick an app downward to collect them, swipe over to a new screen and move all the collected apps there. If you're just moving one app, you can hold on the app with your finger, but instead of dragging it to the edge of the display as you would do in iOS or most versions of Android, you can use another finger to swipe the screen. It's a simple but great tweak I've not seen anywhere else.
Xiaomi has left out the Redmi's Lite Mode, however, which basically supersizes icons and makes the phone more user-friendly for people with visual impairments or who aren't so tech-savvy. The Mi 3, then, isn't a phone you'd buy an elderly relative.
There are also built-in security features such as a blocklist to filter annoying spam numbers, a data monitoring tool that allows you to set which apps are allowed to use mobile data or just Wi-Fi, and a virus scanner from Tencent.
The security app is the hub for accessing data-monitoring features and the virus scanner.Screenshot by Aloysius Low/CNET
Xiaomi claims to have made Android much better, and given its large feature scope and tweaks, it's easy to agree. If you're really savvy and want to try MIUI out before you buy a Xiaomi phone, the ROM is available for download for plenty of devices, though you'll need to root and unlock your device first.
Xiaomi's native apps have a distinct design aesthetic.Screenshot by Aloysius Low/CNET
Camera
The Xiaomi Mi 3 has a 13-megapixel camera, similar in pixel count to those found in other flagship phones. The image quality is good, and the shutter is rather snappy. The phone keeps it simple -- there aren't any special tricks such as Asus' low-light mode, but you do get the standard panorama, HDR, and filters.
Outdoor test shot (click to enlarge).Aloysius Low/CNET
Indoor test shot (click to enlarge).Aloysius Low/CNET
Outdoor test shot (click to enlarge). It's a pretty good image: you can even make out a plane in the far left of the shot.Aloysius Low/CNET
Performance
Powered by last year's Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor, the phone is responsive and I never noticed it lagging. The phone's UI is also very stable, and I didn't encounter any crashes during my tests. The Mi 3 hit 21,164 in the Quadrant benchmarks, and scored 897.163 MFLOPs over 0.19 second in the Linpack multi-thread test. That's a little slower than the superb OnePlus One, but not disastrously so.
Call quality
Phone calls were crisp and clear, and I had no issues with the phone. Speaker volume is also adequate, but because it's located at the bottom, you will have to cup your hand to direct the audio towards your ears when watching video.
Battery life
Packing an embedded 3,050mAh battery, the phone easily lasted more more than a day of moderate use. The phone also comes with various different power modes, so you can select the battery saving option to stretch the uptime further.
Conclusion
Xiaomi has crafted a beautiful, classy device in the Mi 3, and while it may be a little dated, the phone is still one of the better ones you can get today. If you need a huge amount of storage for songs and videos, however, 16GB with no microSD slot likely won't be enough for you.
That said, it's hard to deny how much value Xiaomi has packed into this phone. Compare it to the $349/£299/AU$399 Google Nexus 5, which has the same amount of storage, but a much less pleasing plastic chassis. Against the similarly priced Moto G, the Xiaomi holds up particularly well, with a better processor, camera and screen.
Like many other Chinese-made handsets, the Mi 3 is a top-notch Android phone that easily justifies what you pay for it...and offers a lot more besides.
Aloysius Low/CNET
In India, this phone is currently available only on Flipkart.
