Xiaomi Mi 4i Review

Xiaomi’s latest smartphone to arrive here in the Philippines is the Xiaomi Mi 4i. It’s a tone-down Xiaomi Mi 4 but the Mi 4i got some cool features that the Mi 4 doesn’t have including a big battery and a more affordable price. Despite having a tone-down specifications, the Xiaomi Mi 4i is still considered a flagship smartphone of Xiaomi. Interested? Check out my review below.

Design

One of the main features of the Xiaomi Mi 4i is its thin and sexy profile. Compared to most flagship smartphones these days, the Xiaomi Mi 4i features a plastic design but it is still very solid. The design of the Mi 4i is minimalistic yet eye-catching thanks to its thin bezels along with the colorful MIUI 6.

Unfortunately, this smartphone doesn’t have a removable back instead, you can put in the sim card at the sim card tray located at the top left of the phone. Another cool thing about this smartphone is its battery. Despite having a thin and light design, Xiaomi manages to cram a big 3030mAh Li-Ion battery. A very rare battery to see on a smartphone with a thin and light design like this.

One of the probably dealbreakers of the smartphone is its memory. Yes, there’s a 16GB internal storage inside the smartphone but unfortunately, the Xiaomi Mi 4i’s storage isn’t expandable and you’re stuck with that memory or you could just use USB OTG for your media files to save your memory on your smartphone.

The Xiaomi Mi 4i supports LTE on both sim card slots however, it doesn’t support all LTE bands for all networks which might be a dealbreaker for many people.

Regarding the audio quality of the Xiaomi Mi 4i, it was a little bit of disappointment. The Xiaomi Mi 4i’s audio wasn’t that loud and I think Xiaomi needs to improve the power of its speakers on the Xiaomi Mi 4i.

Display

One of its biggest features is its display. They have a feature called sunlight display which enables you to see the display clearly with the right colors even at direct sunlight. It’s a really awesome and helpful feature especially if you’re always on the go and always checking out your smartphone outside.

The display of the Xiaomi Mi 4i is a 5-inch Full HD IPS LCD Sunlight display and it performs pretty well. The colors were great, the display is very bright, and the screen is very responsive. Actually, Xiaomi Mi 4i’s display is one of my favorite displays that I’ve seen on a smartphone.

Software and Performance

The Xiaomi Mi 4i packs a 2GB of RAM along with the latest 2nd generation 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Octa-Core processor. That specification sounds good on the paper today but the processor is set between the mid-range and their top-tier processor however, it didn’t perform as well as I expected.

My experience on the Xiaomi Mi 4i running on MIUI 6 wasn’t the best that I’ve seen on a Xiaomi device. You can notice that there’s a delay in response when opening an app and it wasn’t really that smooth. I think the MIUI 6 is the one responsible for this and not the Snapdragon 615 processor inside the smartphone. I believe it should be updated and optimized

However when it comes to gaming, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to maxed out the settings on games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas but it was playable when I set the graphics at medium. At Antutu, I got a score of 38175 which isn’t bad for a smartphone with this specifications but again, the real world experience is the most important thing here.

Camera

One of the biggest upgrades that you can see in the Mi 4i is its camera. And damn, I didn’t expect that the camera of the Xiaomi Mi 4i would be this good. The smartphone got a 13-megapixel rear camera with dual-tone dual-LED flash and the images that I shoot were really great. Check out the photos that I took using the Xiaomi MI 4i.

As you can see, the photos were vivid and they are very sharp. You could also notice that the photos are really sharp and the colors are really accurate and even at low-light condition, the Xiaomi Mi 4i’s camera works pretty good.

Verdict

Xiaomi Mi 4i got a pretty damn good design despite its plastic build, good battery life, a beautiful display and a great camera but it is hampered by its performance and slowdowns however, I believe that Xiaomi could fix it by a software update. The Xiaomi Mi 4i’s price is really enticing at P9,799. If you’re interested you can order one right now at Smart or at Lazada. You can get it here at Smart Plan 999.