At an event in India, hosted by ex-Googler Hugo Barra Xiaomi has tonight launched their first ‘Global’ phone the Xiaomi Mi 4i. The stream was unreliable at best, with multiple dropouts, but they’ve taken the wraps of a phone which is well priced and pretty powerful spec wise.
The presentation had a lot of focus on lifestyle and capturing those moments through their cameras which are 13MP rear facing and 5MP “selfie” cam. With a number of smart processing features that enhance your nature and panoramic shots as well as the beautify feature being on by default for the selfie cam; the camera functionality on the Xiaomi Mi 4i is going to impress the vast majority of users.
Something of an interesting, yet also extremely frustrating development is the fact that there was a point made of the drop, tumble and yes; bend tests that Xiaomi put their devices through as part of the design and testing phase for the phones. The reality is: Drop your phone, you’ll damage it and if you put enough pressure sideways on the device it will bend or catastrophically break.
Thankfully the presentation didn’t stall too long to linger on #bendgate, moving on quite quickly and giving us the Specs:
- 5” (Full HD) 1080P with Corning Gorilla Glass 3
- 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615 SoC
- 2GB DDR3
- 16GB Storage
- Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac
- 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 lens and dual-tone LED flash and 5MP front-facing camera with f/1.8 lens both featuring Sony/Samsung Sensors
- MIUI6 First Xiaomi Device over Android 5.0 (Lollipop)
- 3120mAh battery
- 7.8mm thin
The question on everyones lips at the end of the presentation of the new device and its specs as always is the price which came in at ₹12,999 which works out to (on the exchange rate at the time of writing this article) AU$265.00 which is a pretty sharp price for a phone which fits in the higher end of the mid range field .
Now the bad news, not unexpectedly the Mi 4i is only available in Asian markets – so actually getting your hands on one will most likely involve additional costs. But, if you’re interested in getting one, keep your eyes on importers who may decide to import the phone – we’ll keep you posted.
Edit:
Xiaomi has launched the product page for the Mi 4i which has a heap of information about the phone and its features. Head over to the Xiaomi Mi 4i product page and check it out.
Do you think if it was sold in Australia, the Xiaomi Mi 4i could become a high seller?
Liking the look of this phone as an alternative to any other mid range phone currently on market. Seems to support the majority of Telstra prepaid 4g bands. For someone who doesn’t play intensive games or need massive storage, this seems a no brainer. Given how cheap it is, I could use it confidently without a case. Also buying grey import at such a low price negates the warranty worry factor. The big question is, will places like kogan stock it? We seem to be able to purchase a lot of Xiaomi branded products in oz so surely availability wouldn’t… Read more »
It doesn’t do U900, which is important for Vodafone.
How is Xiaomi with updates? I suspect the MIUI6 UI is not so great, but the specs and price are great.
With Xiaomi phones, you get weekly OTA. That’s right, there are weekly updates!
MIUI has many fans. The design is not to everyone’s taste, but it has a die hard group of fans. It’s fast and bloat free. In fact it’s the only skin that’s even faster than AOSP.
Remember, MIUI was out as a custom ROM long before Xiaomi ever made phones, so they know how to make ROMs.
Wow. Weekly as in delta updates through the phone, or having to download a 250MB+ zip via xda? Do they update to new versions of Android promptly?
Do the phones come rooted? Do you have a good link where I can check out the interface (otherwise I’ll just Google it).
It looks like there’s a version for the G3, so I could test it out. http://en.miui.com/download-257.html
Just look at MIUI. I used to run it on my Nexus One. It was cool.. something different. Felt more polished. Had data usage app built in way before it came to Android proper.
Its like a cross of some parts of iOS mixed with Android.
http://en.miui.com/overview.php
You can get roms for lots of devices, you might be able to try it out now.