The Xiaomi Mi4 is one of the biggest handset releases in Nigeria in 2015 and deserves testing one out.
Here is the experience you are going to get upon using the smartphone:
Up: Xiaomi Mi4 proves to be amazingly built with quality, fast software, excellent hardware and pocket-friendly.
Down: It is unbelievable that Xiaomi Mi4 has no Micro SD card slot; showing that the design is a clear imitation of the iPhone.
Design & Display (DD)
The Mi4 come with a metal chassis fronted by a Gorilla Glass screen and backed with a plastic rear panel. Along the bottom you’ll find a single speaker and again looking like the one seen on the iPhone 5.
The device uses MicroUSB-B, a clear departure from what “regular” smartphones use which is MicroUSB-A.
The USB-B connection will still fit, however, but there’s the added danger of inserting it upside down here.
Sleek phones loving Nigerians will definitely find a “companion” in Xiaomi Mi4, especially for it semblance with iPhone.
The hardware (body) build quality is fantastic, and the use of metal equates the smartphone to a standard not usually associated with Android arena.
The 5in IPS display is also striking and very impressive, sporting a full HD 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution and rock-solid viewing angles.
Interestingly, the display is easily seen in direct sunlight, and boasts the kind of colour replication you’d expect from a top of the line handset.
Hardware and Performance (HP)
While the Xiaomi Mi4’s price may be well below what you’d pay for an iPhone 6 or Galaxy S5 –– in Nigeria, of course, it retails for less than N50,000.
Mi4 has some elegant specifications, including a quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset clocked at 2.5GHz. That’s backed by 3GB of RAM, all of which provides a silky-smooth user experience and amazing performance when playing 3D games.
The 3G unit we reviewed comes with 16GB of storage while the 4G unit has 64 gigabytes .
It’s worthy of note that there is no way to add in more storage using Micro SD cards, so you’ll have to choose wisely if you like downloading lots of content.
Also, NFC is also missing, which iis not pleasant when you consider that the tech is likely to take off in a big way now that Apple is officially supporting it with its new iPhone models.
Software (MIUI)
Xiaomi’s MIUI (pronounced, “Me-You-Eye”) is snap on Android.
In the case of MIUI 5, which ships with the Mi4, it’s built on Android 4.3.
However, unlike other manufacturers Xiaomi has been quite aggressive with its UI skin.
Unlike to a Western user who may not enjoy not Google apps, largely because Android phones sold in China rarely come with such software pre-installed, Nigerians can (though a Google Installer application) load up everything you need, from Gmail to Google Play.
While MIUI 5 was the OS that shipped with the device reviewed, it is upgradable to MIUI 6 (based on Android 4.4), which isn’t officially available as yet but can easily be flashed to the phone using a dedicated application.
Another feature of MIUI that makes it feel like iOS is the lack of an app drawers. Of course, all time Android fans may find it hard to get adapt. But, you can still use widgets as normal.
There is minor change on the MIUI based as the notification bar at the top of the screen no longer displays any icons, and instead you have to slide down the notification panel to see what messages you have.
The challenge is the possible of one often missing notifications or ignored them purely because they didn’t flash up in the bar.
But, designers at Mi are smart enough to compensate. Thus, notifications now pop up at the top of the screen no matter what activity you’re involved in –– just like they do in iOS.
MIUI 6 are very cool; coming with “Do Not Disturb” option built into the OS itself, and there are little customizations to play around with, including a menu which allows you to control the colour temperature of the screen.
Most of all though, MIUI is fast; perhaps not as swift as stock Android on a Nexus 5, but certainly meets the fancy.
Battery and Camera (BC)
The Mi4 has a large 3080mAh battery, and edges of the in the Galaxy S5 in terms of size. It seems there is behind the scenes operations that ensure the Mi4 lasts longer than most of its big-screen rivals.
This is because, it lasts almost three entire days out of the pphone. This has not been the case with an Android phone for some time now.
It’s actually possible to select from different battery profiles, but most interesting to us is the “Balanced” mode that left most features running and intact, presumably dialing down the Snapdragon 801 chipset in order to save on the juice. Regardless of what tactics Xiaomi is adopting to preserve battery life, the Mi4’s stamina supercede others of same status.
Xiaomi Mi4 brandished its Sony-made 13MP camera and that is equally impressive.
It offers excellent picture quality and fast focus times. The Mi4 is capable of producing some spectacular images, even if it does occasionally struggle with high-contrast areas.
Verdict
Xiaomi understands that iPhone hasn’t made significant inroads to Nigeria, which might have spurred it to through up the “iPhone of China” into the market late last year.
However, and with its incredible power and a gorgeous design; making it one of the best phones of 2015 (in Nigeria) , as long as you can put up with snatches of Chinese text, there are drawbacks also. Without Micro SD card slot being possibly the most obvious and the lack of 4G in this launch model is also an issue.
Not including NFC seems very shortsighted by Xiaomi.
Nonetheless, it is worth putting up with due to the speed and the design being the most aesthetically pleasing Android handsets in the market now.