Xiaomi: Mi3 Indepth Review

• Posted By Amritesh
• On October 8th, 2014
• Comments: one response

XIAOMI MI3: REVIEW

 Mi3 is the flagship device of Xiaomi launched just couple of months back in India. The phone’s launch was much awaited in India due to the fact that it offered amazing specs at a pretty affordable price. When the phone finally got launched it opened to a huge response and thus far more than 1,00,000 units have been sold in India. The phone was one of the first from Xiaomi to be launched and few more are expected to follow in the coming months including their latest flagship model Mi4.

The phone is available in India is @`13,999/-.

Now let’s look at Mi3 and find out if it is able to live up to the pre launch hype surrounding it.

Build

The first thing which will attract you is the design of the phone. The phone has a unique rectangular design which looks pretty stylish. The body is made from high quality plastic with aluminium chassis which holds the phone together. The unibody design feels solid and gives a metallic touch to the device. The build does make it feel like a premium device although I feel rounded edges might have helped in making it more accessible. The device just 8.1mm thick and is quite slippery too. So one has to be a tad careful handling it. Despite having a pretty good build quality many users have reported problem with Sim tray not coming out or breaking in the process to take it out. You have to thrust the pin forcefully to make the sim tray pop out in some of the handsets. Again users have to be cautious while trying to eject the sim tray.

In India it is available in Metallic Grey variant.

Display

Mi3 sports a 5’ inch full HD display with a resolution of 1920*1080 which translates into a pixel density of 441ppi. The display is really crisp like any another flagship device selling at twice the price or more. The display does not fade or blur even at extreme viewing angles. The screen looks vibrant and you will have no issues with the display quality. The Auto Brightness sensor also works pretty well and screen can be viewed even in the sunlight. The device sports Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which seems to be quite sturdy. The LED notification is on the top near the ear piece.

Hardware

Mi3 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset with processor clocked @ 2.3Ghz backed by 2 gb of Ram. The GPU used in this device is Adreno 330 clocked @550mhz. It has an internal storage for 16gb out of which 13gb odd is available for the users. Unfortunately you cannot add any external SD card on it.

The hardware is something which you find on high end devices and performance wise Mi3 is pretty powerful. It can perform most the tasks without any lag and handles multitasking with ease. The powerful hardware configuration ensures you can enjoy most of the graphics extensive game at the highest setting.

Software

Mi3 uses the custom MiUi5 skin over the Android Kitkat 4.4.2. The Miui 5 seems to be inspired by Apple’s IOS and offers a lot of customization. The User Interface is pretty different stock android experience but does deter the performance in anyway. The Interface looks pretty refreshing and is pretty user friendly and offer a lot of options. The device will receive the next Android update as well as the new user interface MiUi 6 by the end of this year.

Despite the Miui5 skin on top of Android Kitkat the performance of the phone is pretty smooth and responsive.

Battery Life

One of the important aspect of any smartphone is the battery life. Here Mi3 performs exceedingly well in this department. Despite having HD resolution and powerful processor at work the performance is very well optimized to last you throughout the day with heavy usage. It easily gave 4-5 hours of screen time after a full charge.

So you don’t need to worry about the battery if you are a normal or for that matter even a heavy user.

Gaming

In terms of gaming it is one of the better devices in this price range. With an impressive hardware configuration it can handle any game thrown at it. It renders full graphics and you can play most of games in the highest setting. However if you continuously play games for 15-20 minutes you will notice considerable amount of heating near the rear camera region.

Network and Reception

The network connectivity is decent and call quality is also pretty good. However when you on call for a very long time you might find that voice tends to get a bit muffled or volume automatically goes down. Xiaomi did roll out a stable update which has solved the problem to a certain extent.

Camera

Mi3 has a 13 megapixel camera which will get you decent clicks but compared to other flagship devices you will find the images to be little soft but not bad by any means. Images look natural and don’t have much noise in it. The front cam is also decent for taking selfies. The video recording at full HD is good although the speaker volume is slightly low.

Overall Impression

I would say the phone is a pretty good buy at the price it is selling and its performance could be compared with that of Nexus 5. The minor issues with this phone is with the sim tray, occasional lowering of volumes during call and tendency to heat up while gaming.

Apart from the cons mentioned above I found the phone to be pretty responsive and performance is also quite impressive. You do get a lot of features and power punched handset at a very affordable price. If Xiaomi provides the after sales service like the way they do in China then Tier 1 brands will have to rethink their strategy going ahead. Xiaomi has just rolled out an upgrade (Kitkat 4.4.4) for Mi3 which promises to remove the few bugs which existed with the phone and make the experience for end users even better.

Key Specifications are given below:-

Processor	2.3 Ghz Quad Core(Qualcomm Snapdragon 800)
Storage	16GB (No SD Card Support)
Operating System	Android Kitkat 4.4.2 (Upgrade to L assured)
Rear Camera	13 megapixel (With Dual Led Flash)
Front Camera	2 mp
Ram	2 GB
Battery	3050 Mah
Display	5’inch (Corning Gorilla Glass3)
Type Sim	Mini Sim/GSM 3G Support
Resolution	1920*1080(441ppi)
Touchscreen Type	Capacitive
Dimension(mm)/Weight(gms)	144*73.6*8.1 /145