While the Xiaomi Mi3 had a differently looking back cover, the Mi4 was made with loads of inspirations from the well known brands – overall look from Apple iPhone 4, and the back area like any of the previous Samsung Galaxy devices. But are these two factors enough to claim against the Xiaomi Mi4? the device on the first impressions look pretty excellent with the UI and the performance, apart from the comfort that it gave in the hand. The latest flagship from Xiaomi was recently launched in the Chinese market and it is creating quite some buzz already, thanks to the latest best internal specs backed by a very neat design which is far from being called “unique”, but who cares? you are getting what you are paying for!
Xiaomi Mi4 Hands-on
It is the same plastic used on the back, but Xiaomi has made it look more obvious this time with the white material, but the sides are brilliantly made with the beveled edges which give a comfort and also helps in giving a grip to hold – a very good thing to notice when compared to the roundish edges on the sides of Mi3 which made the device even more slippery.
There’s nothing wrong or bad about the 1080p display, same as the one in Mi3 under the 5-inch screen, but the Xiaomi Mi4 has even thinner bezels making it look beautiful. Most of the real estate on the front is now occupied by the display itself. The bottom part of the phone is where one would think about the Apple’s iPhone – the speaker grill, whitish bands from front to back look no different.
The MIUI v5 is based on Android 4.4.4 Kitkat, the latest one right now and the UI is as always, interesting and never boring. Although the absence of app drawer might raise questions in the mind of first time users, there is nothing that is restricted. You can still place widgets and shortcuts on the home screens itself, thus the MIUI holds an advantage over the other custom ROMs placed in the smartphones, for example, the Amigo UI in the Gionee Elife series flagship devices.
After playing around with the Mi4 for sometime, I could feel that there has been some good optimization done on the camera part and the 13MP shooter on the back of this device does capture better photos than its predecessor. Performance wise, there was nothing really to complain about, because it was quite snappy and responsive and about 2.2GB RAM was free initially out of the 3GB which is quite a lot for multitasking with the powerful Snapdragon 801 chipset.
No, it isn’t the iPhone. It’s the Xiaomi Mi4.
For the first impressions, the Xiaomi Mi4 is a real beauty, not taking away the credits with the design but with the performance and UI. The display already looks beautiful just like it was in the Mi3, but the bezel size reduction and the smooth touch with good touch recognition makes the feel even better.
