At a special ‘i’ event in New Delhi, Xiaomi unveiled the much-rumoured Xiaomi Mi 4i smartphone. The exclusive event marks the first time a launch was ever done outside of China, a sign of how important the Indian market is for the rapidly-growing China upstart.
The Mi 4 was Xiaomi’s flagship that debuted last year, featuring an all-metal unibody. Disappointingly, aside from in its own country, the Mi 4 never made it to any other market.
The Mi 4i plans to change all of that — the ‘i’ moniker denoting international. The new device, though, seems more of a stripped down version of the Mi 4 rather than a replacement, with a back to basics plastics approach. The polycarbonate unibody is 12% thinner and 13% lighter than the Mi 4, measuring at 7.8mm thick and weighing just 130g.
It sports a 5-inch Full HD display (441PPI) with Sunlight Display, a new feature that adjusts screen brightness and optimises images when in harsh sunlight. Xiaomi claims that it’s brighter than conventional displays and is 30% more efficient.
Internally, the Mi 4i is powered by a second generation 64-bit quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC mated to an Adreno 405 CPU. It packs 2GB RAM, 16GB storage sans any microSD slot. Early AnTuTu benchmarks have revealed a score of over 40,000 points. Not shabby at all.
It’s a dual-SIM, dual-standby 4G LTE device, similar to the new Redmi 2.
The Mi 4i gets a bigger 3,120mAh battery that supports Quick Charge and is claimed to return 1.5 days of average use.
Commonly found in smartphones today is the venerable 13MP Sony/Samsung main shooter, with a five-element f/2.0 lens. It also comes with a two-tone LED flash. The front shooter is a 5MP unit with an impressive f/1.8 aperture and 80-degree wide angle lens. In his presentation, Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra showcased the Mi 4i’s HDR photo performance.
Gimmicky or otherwise, the front camera integrates the popular Beautify feature that adjusts beautification levels based on your estimated age. So older means more beautification needed, presumably?
What’s cool is that the Mi 4i is the first Xiaomi device to run Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box, sugarcoated with the iOS-like MIUI 6.0.
Barra revealed that the Xiaomi Mi 4i will retail for Rs. 12,999 (RM746) in India, and will be available in blue, white, black, yellow and pink. Malaysians can expect the global device sometime in May.
Our MindBlow partners SoyaCincau.com and TheSkop are currently in India bringing you exclusive hands-on reports of the new device.
Source: Xiaomi, SoyaCincau.com, TheSkop
