r a company that launched its first phone in the
country a little over nine months ago, Xiaomi has
made quite an impact on the Indian market. While
its inaugural launch, the Xiaomi Mi 3, targeted the
big boys by offering specifications similar to
Android flagships by Samsung, Sony, and HTC at
one-third the price, the Xiaomi Redmi 1S
redefined customer expectations in terms of what
a sub-Rs. 6,000 smartphone could offer.
The Xiaomi formula has struck a chord with the
value-conscious Indian consumer, winning the
company a host of 'Mi fans'. It is now the fifth-
largest smartphone vendor in the country, and
India is Xiaomi's biggest overseas market,
indicating how far the company has come in the
relatively short time.
However, the problem with offering a great deal to
consumers is that there's always a better one
going around - as Xiaomi found with the launch
of Mi 4. The smartphone launched in India with a
price tag that was nearly 50 percent higher than
Mi 3's, disappointing value-seeking Mi fans who
had come to expect that Xiaomi would pull the
proverbial rabbit out of the bargain hat with every
big launch.
At Rs. 12,999, the Xiaomi Mi 4i is firmly in the Mi
3 territory as far as pricing it concerned. But does
the smartphone have what it takes to capture the
minds and market like the original smash hit from
Xiaomi? Let's find out.
Design and display
The Xiaomi Mi 4i comes with a unibody design
that lends it a very solid look and feel. It's built
from high-quality polycarbonate which is atypical
of devices at this price point. At first glance, the
Mi 4i looks similar to the iPhone 5c - the multi-
coloured variants certainly adding to that
impression - but the matte finish and the
materials used mean that in terms of look and
feel the Mi 4i is closer to some of the high-end
Lumia devices than the iPhone 5c.
Though the Mi 4i is slated to come in various
colour options, only the white 16GB (more on that
later) variant will be available at launch, which
will disappoint a few potential buyers. We don't
blame them since white can be a bit of a dust
magnet, especially in Indian conditions. The back
is not user-removable, which means your plan of
buying the white model and then snapping on an
aftermarket back cover of your choice will be a
non-starter. You can buy one of the official shells
or flip covers to give your Mi 4i a more personal
look and save that back from dust and smudges.
A white Xiaomi Mi 4i wearing a black back cover.
In terms of the layout of buttons and ports, the
Xiaomi Mi 4i is pretty standard - the power
button is on the right edge, just below the volume
rocker; the 3.5mm audio jack and the Micro-USB
port are at the top and bottom respectively; a
noise-cancelling microphone sits at the back,
alongside the rear camera module and the dual-
tone LED flash, to go with the mic at the bottom.
The dual Micro-SIM tray is on the left.
Though the Mi 4i has a 5-inch (4.95-inch if you
are being accurate) full-HD screen, the
smartphone doesn't feel very big. That's partially
due to the growing acceptance of larger
smartphones and partially to the excellent
display-to-body ratio of the Mi 4i. The screen
made using a custom solution from Corning that
Xiaomi claims offer the same level of protection
as Gorilla Glass 3.
Colour reproduction and viewing angles on the
Xiaomi Mi 4i are great. The display is bright
enough for text and other on-screen elements to
be easily visible under sunlight, though you may
find yourself getting distracted by your reflection.
The Mi 4i comes with what Xiaomi terms a
Sunlight Display. Xiaomi's demos somewhat
exaggerate the effect of the adjustments that the
technology makes, but in real life the changes are
too subtle to notice - and we mean that as a
compliment.
What the Sunlight Display effectively does is
brighten darker portions of an image when you
are outdoors to make the details easily visible.
This is best experienced when viewing an image
that has mixed lighting - some bright, even over-
exposed areas, with other areas that are dark,
perhaps a little bit under-exposed. On a typical
display, you can see enough details all across the
image when you are indoors, but you may
struggle to see the details in the dark areas of the
image under direct sunlight.
Most phones compensate for this by
automatically increasing the overall brightness of
the display, which makes darker areas easier to
see, but also puts more strain on the battery.
With Sunlight Display, the Xiaomi Mi 4i is
analysing the on-screen image in real time and
brightening only the darker parts, so the resulting
image is clearer overall. It's important to note
that the changes are happening only on the
screen, and not to images stored on your device.
Xiaomi says the behind-the-scenes analysis is
done by a dedicated chip that's independent of
the CPU, so the battery penalty is minimal.
Sunlight Display technology is not just used to
liven up images, but also to alter UI elements.
The background colour of the on-screen keys, for
example, changes to make characters easier to
see in different lighting conditions. Though most
won't consciously notice the Sunlight Display's
effects in action in real life, it's safe to say that
the Xiaomi Mi 4i has the best display in its class,
and it is perhaps the highlight of the device.
Software and performance
The Xiaomi Mi 4i comes with MIUI 6 running on
top of Android 5.0.2. We've covered various
aspects of the MIUI skin in depth in our previous
Xiaomi reviews, though we'd like to reiterate
some points and highlight certain elements.
To say that MIUI is RAM hungry would be an
understatement, and we've come across Xiaomi
devices in the past where there wasn't enough
memory available for end-user applications.
Thankfully, the Mi 4i comes with 2GB RAM, a
little less than half of which is available to
applications when you boot up the device.
The left-most capacitive button is mapped by
default to show the Recent Apps, with the screen
also showing the amount of RAM that is currently
available to apps. There's also an on-screen
button ('X') that lets you kill apps and free up
RAM. Juggling between multiple apps wasn't a
problem on the Mi 4i, which means you really
shouldn't need to use that button, but you may
find yourself using that functionality just because
it's easily accessible.
We believe decisions like memory management
should be left to the operating system, since
unnecessarily killing apps can actually slow down
the phone when you launch them the next time.
Those who like to be in control of every little
thing will appreciate this feature, which is clearly
a legacy of Xiaomi devices that are more stingy in
terms of the built-in RAM on offer. You can 'lock'
an app by sliding its icon down while in the
Recent Apps view, which means it will not be
killed when you use the X button. Thankfully, this
selection is remembered across reboots.
MIUI is not without some quirks. Many
animations take a fraction longer than they
should, slowing you down when what you really
want is for UI to let you do what you are trying to
do. This is not down to limitations of the
hardware, but software design decisions that put
form over function, not dissimilar to what Apple
did with iOS 7 before toning down the animations
after widespread criticism. There are other
frustrations such as the Settings app forgetting
our position every time we switch away and come
back to it, throwing us back to the main Settings
menu. Some third-party apps also randomly
crash on Xiaomi devices, at a rate that's frequent
enough compared to other devices to warrant a
mention.
Then there was one occasion on which the phone
couldn't send or receive data over 3G, even when
an iPhone connected to the Mi 4i (which was also
doubling up as hotspot) was chugging away
smoothly on the very same connection. A couple
of restarts didn't help, but stopping and then re-
enabling 3G data on the third attempt fixed
things. At various other times, Mail app had
trouble recognising touch inputs. At first we
thought there was a problem related to the
touchscreen, but we later narrowed this down to
just the Mail app, which we found strange and
frustrating in equal parts.
One feature that Xiaomi touted during the Mi 4i
launch event is Visual IVR. The company is using
crowdsourced data to map IVR menus of
commonly used numbers such as India Railways,
Vodafone, Cleartrip, and others to build a visual
tree of their IVR menus. So, for example, if you
call Indian Railways, you will be presented with
options like '1 for English, 2 for Hindi..' on screen,
and you don't need to wait to hear the entire
menu read out to you before selecting your
choice. You can simply select the option by
tapping it on screen, and you'll be instantly
shown all options at the next level, and so on.
We were looking forward to testing this feature,
as it's sure to make the harrowing experience of
calling customer care lines a little less painful.
Unfortunately, the feature is still in beta and will
only come to the Mi 4i and other Xiaomi phones
later via a software update. Note that there's
nothing 'official' about this feature, in that Xiaomi
is not tying up with companies to 'enable' this
functionality for them. It is just crowdsourcing the
IVR tree for popular numbers. The company will
share more details on how you can contribute to
add/ update IVR information once the service is
rolled out.
Other than the issues we mentioned above, we
didn't encounter any performance problems. The
Mi 4i handled everything we threw at it with
aplomb. In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the Mi
4i did better than the Mi 3 and even the Mi 4,
which was a little bit of a surprise. The
smartphone became slightly warm during our
gaming sessions and the battery loop test, but
not enough to be a concern.
The Mi 4i comes with 16GB of internal storage,
10.68GB of which is available for applications and
user data when you boot up the phone for the first
time. This will disappoint gamers and those who
love lugging their media collection wherever they
go, given the lack of a microSD slot. There's talk
of a 64GB variant coming soon, but no official
word on if and when that might happen. The Mi
4i supports USB OTG, which means you can plug
in USB drives and other devices via the Micro-
USB port.
Xiaomi claims that MIUI comes with support for
six Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu,
Malayalam, Kannada, and Bengali - but we found
a seventh lurking in the Settings menu - Marathi.
We didn't experience any problems while making
calls with the Xiaomi Mi 4i that could be
attributed to the phone rather than the sad state
of networks in this country. The phone supports
4G on both SIMs, but we couldn't test the feature
due to lack of coverage in our region. The
loudspeaker does a decent job during calls and
while watching movies and/ or listening to music.
Camera and battery life
The Xiaomi Mi 4i comes with a 13-megapixel rear
camera that captures great detail outdoors and in
extremely well-lit conditions. However, pictures
taken in medium-to-low light show noise and
over-saturation. HDR mode performs well.
The dual-tone LED flash does a good job of
lighting up subjects evenly. Videos captured by
the rear camera look decent, though colour
reproduction is slightly off here as well. The in-
built mic does a good job of capturing clear
audio.
The front-facing 'selfie' camera has a similar tale
to tell - it takes great pictures in well-lit
conditions but the results are more miss than hit
under low light. The Mi 4i includes a
beautification feature that attempts to remove
wrinkles and other 'embellishments' from your
face, along with the remnants of your dignity. The
feature can be toned down or bumped up, and
thankfully it can be turned off completely as well,
for when you feel like getting back in touch with
your natural self.
The Xiaomi Mi 4i has a 3000mAh battery that the
company claims is designed to give one-and-a-
half days of usage in typical conditions. Our real
life experience was a little underwhelming in
comparison. While the smartphone easily lasted
an entire day, we were down to sucking the last
bits of juice out of the battery by the next
morning.
This was with moderate to heavy usage - two
push email accounts configured on the phone's
native email client, a bit of social networking
throughout the day, 20 minutes of calling, and a
few minutes of gaming. The display was set to
auto brightness and the phone hooked on to a 3G
data connection throughout with automatic app
updates disabled. We also had the phone paired
with the Mi Band over Bluetooth.
We have seen other Snapdragon 615-powered
smartphones give disappointingresults in our
battery tests, so maybe that's why Xiaomi
needed to pack in a large battery to deliver what
is, at the end of the day, an acceptable result.
Verdict
With the Mi 4i, Xiaomi has another clear winner
on its hands. The phone costs less than half as
much as some of its Snapdragon 615-powered
brethren and still outperforms them in all
departments. The Moto G (Gen. 2) has been our
favourite pick at this price point, but the Mi 4i
scores with a stunning screen and great build
quality.
Having said that, MIUI is not without its quirks
and the camera performance could've been better,
so if you prefer the stock Android experience,
expandable storage, and a camera that's a little
bit more forgiving, the Moto G (Gen. 2) is still a
solid pick. Everyone else, go ahead register
yourself for the next flash sale of the Xiaomi Mi
4i.
15:49:00
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