It literally is a new leaf in the books of Xiaomi as they finally decide to enter the Indian market and what a bang have they made. Their latest flagship has already been sold off from Flipkart.com within hours of its arrival online in the India market. Flipkart, on online retailer being their exclusive retailer in India for Xiaomi phones has already begun registrations for the next batch of Xiaomi flagship the Mi 3 which costs INR 13,999/-. We can readily claim that this phone might have been selling faster than even hot cakes for that matter. But what really makes the Xiaomi Mi 3 such a mouthwatering proposition? Let’s check it out in our detailed review about the device.
Body & Design:
Look at the Mi 3 and you will see nothing more than sheer brilliance in the device from top to bottom. It is a very well-crafted piece with clean lines and cuts and smooth texture everywhere wanting you to keep touching it all the time. The frame is made of an aluminum-magnesium alloy making it really sturdy, yet light. This means that dropping the phone on the ground should not make you skip your beats all the time. The phone measures 144mm by 73.6mm and it is a staggering 8.1mm thick making it a really slim phone compared to the firepower it is packing which we will come to in a bit. It comes in a metallic grey colour and can be customized to a variety of colour options later.
Hardware:
this is where the real value proposition of the phone comes to light. The device is packing the holy-grail of processors, the Snapdragon 800 Quad-Core Krait 400 processor clocked at 2.3 GHz. This is the fastest processor out in the market right now. Add to that the Krait 400 is 40% faster than the snapdragon 600 which allows for faster processing. This is couple with the Adreno 330 GPU clocked at 450 MHz taking care of the graphics need. This able combination can be seen only in flagships of today and that too which are about 3 times the cost of this device. So you can judge for yourself the value of the product.
Display:
The device packs a 5 inch display which is an IPS LCD one providing for classy and wide viewing angles without distorting the clarity of the screen. Plus being an IPS display, it is good for touch as well as non-battery guzzling. The resolution is a Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel at 441 pixels per inch (ppi). Now that means watching movies, playing games as well as viewing any High definition content is surely going to be a real treat. Plus a Full HD resolution at this price point means it is a steal.
Camera:
The camera on the device is an able 13MP shooter with an aperture of f2.2. The biggest advantage of this camera is the 28 mm wide angle capability which will make sure that none of your friends miss out from the picture. The camera along with the 2MP FFC can capture Full HD 1080p videos. The 2MP front will make sure you get those selfies spot on while the 13MP coupled with a dual LED flash will make you feel like carrying a DSLR wherever you go.
Battery:
The battery on the device is a 3050 mAh battery which is the best in class for the phone at the price point where it sits. Finding phones with even 2400 mAh batter at this price point is finding a diamond in the desert, so Xiaomi knowing what the end user wants has packed a huge battery which will make sure the phone can be taken to far off places and will last you for long without you looking out for and running helter-skelter for a power source. The phone has a standby time of 500 hours and can last full 21 hours on 3G internet surfing and 25 hours on 2G internet. Music playback time is a decent 50 hours while HD video watching time ranges between 8-10 hours.
Memory:
The device though has its shortcomings as it packs only 16GB of memory on board and also does not sport an expandable storage slot, though Xiaomi has plans to bring in a 64GB version of the same. So if you are a music or movie buff and like to carry your world around with you, this might be a huge bummer. But Xiaomi has packed such a huge surprise that it will pretty much blow your mind. USB OTG is the name. USB On The Go is a feature available on the Mi 3 which means you can use the OTG cable and attach your mass storage devices as well Thumb drives and access as much of your entertainment on the go as you wish. Feel sorry about missing out on the Micro SD slot? I don’t think so!
OS:
Being a new phone, the Mi 3 comes with Android 4.4 KitKat running under the hood with a planned upgrade to Android L whenever it arrives in your region and Xiaomi pushes it to you via an OTA update. The Android experience though has been enriched by Xiaomi by putting their own overlay over KitKat which they call the MIUI. As cute as the name sounds, the overlay is also quite beautiful to look at and the animations and functions on it are also nice. MIUI has its own call and sms apps allowing you for a more personal and a cloud based usability experience.
Xiaomi is pushing its Mi Cloud service almost everywhere and this can be seen pretty clearly here with almost every feature and function is very heavily integrated with their cloud service. Also the skin is so sophisticated that Xiaomi provides many amazing functions like Data Usage Meter, Block list, Anti-Virus, One touch Backups, App permissions, Device tracking and cloud services in-built so that you do not have to download other third-party apps for this purpose.
Features:
Apart from all that, what makes the Xiaomi Mi 3 such a special device is the myriad of features that it offers with it. Apart from the already discussed HD display, Snapdragon 800 processor, cloud and USB OTG, the Mi 3 comes loaded with dual band 5GHz Wi-Fi, NFC, Wi-Fi display, Wi-Fi direct, Bluetooth HID and Bluetooth 4.0LE. Now if that is surely make you want to salivate for the phone even more.
So when the phone comes loaded with all the things mentioned above and with a price tag of only INR 13,999/- inclusive of taxes, there is only one thing to do and that is to go and grab it. A well rounded and made phone, light, sturdy, powerful, feature packed and running android with an update planned, this might just turn out to be the new killer in town. You can pick this up by registering yourself on the Flipkart registration page for the device in the next lot right here. (http://www.flipkart.com/mi)
Team DainikDisha