Xiaomi announced Mi4, their best phone ever with the same affordable price

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While Xiaomi is stepping out of its homeland China and making its mark, its 2013 flagship, Mi3 is not good enough to compete with the rest of the market any more. The recent price cut certainly reflected that. So this will be a good timing for Xiaomi to release their new flagship phone, which turned out to be named Xiaomi Mi4.

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Xiaomi has upgraded almost every part of the phone.

Mi4 comes with Snapdragon 801 Quad-Core 2.5GHz and a whopping 3GB of RAM. While 2GB of RAM is sufficient for smooth UI experience, 3GB of RAM will be for multitasking as your processes will not be killed by the system.

For the first time, Xiaomi’s smartphone support up to 4G LTE.

The 3,080mAh battery is about the same with Mi3 but Xiaomi has included faster charging standard at 9V 1.2A. You can reach 60% in an hour.

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Xiaomi also included new IR blaster for you to control your TV.

However, no memory expansion is available.

The cameras in the phone got a great improvement too.  The both camera has a much larger aperture at f/1.8, which will improve the performance in low light condition.  The software has been improved too. The rear camera keep the same pixel count but it can now capture 4K videos. The front camera got bumped to 8 mega pixels too.

Spec

Xiaomi teased their launching event as “Artistic Journey of a Steel Plate” and it is a no brainer that steel is used in Mi4.

To be exact, the frame of the phone is made of stainless steel.

During the event, Lei Jun, the CEO of Xiaomi has spent quite considerable time on their manufacturing process of the steel frame.

The number of processes showed how much effort Xiaomi spent on the build quality of the phone.

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The phone is available in black and white. The design of the phone is simple but I do have the feeling that it looks very similar to other phone.

I feel that the design is a mixture between iPhone 5 and Lumia 930. As I like the design of both phones, I find the appearance of this phone very appealing too.

The back of the phone is slightly curved and removable. You can choose a cover with different textures such as wood, bamboo or leather.

The front is quite normal but I am amazed by the thinness of the bezel, which contributes to a smaller footprint.

While keeping the same screen size, Xiaomi managed to cut down the length and width by a significant amount.

The trade off here is the small increase in weight and thickness.

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In my opinion, Mi4 is a worthy upgrade over Mi3.

The specifications are top of the line and the improvement in design and built is significant.

Almost every aspect that I do not like on Mi3 that I mentioned in my review has been addressed such as thick bezel, no 4G LTE, slow charging rate and uninspiring design in the new iteration.

Most importantly, Xiaomi managed to keep the launching price the same.

This is very, very important as price is always the most lethal weapon for Xiaomi, The only phone that has similar price and specifications will be OnePlus One, which is almost impossible to get. So I think Mi4 will have its place in the market.

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The 3G version is priced at RMB1999 (RM1020 or USD320) for 16GB model and RMB 2499 ( RM1280 or USD400) for the 64GB model. It will be available on 29 July. You can also bought “insurance” for your phone to cover for phone damage including water damage and cracked screen for RMB99 (RM50 or USD16 per year. However, there is no word on price and availability for the 4G LTE version yet. It should be slightly more expensive than the 3G version. So stay tuned for more updates of the phone!  You can visit the official page for Mi4 for more information. (Too bad only Mandarin version is live now)

SOURCE: orgui.wordpress.com

Yan Duan is the owner of OrGui Tech Blog, a young Malaysian who shares his thoughts on current trending technology. Hoping to provide a platform for people to learn about new technologies and make the most out of their gadgets.He can be reached at [email protected]. Kindly visit http://orgui.wordpress.com for more technology stories.