Xiaomi Mi 4 Review

Xiaomi has come out all guns blazing and has already lined up a successor to the widely popular Mi 3 as the latest Mi 4. Just like the other new entrants in the market like Oppo and Meizu, Xiaomi was also greeted a bit skeptically at first, but since the vast acceptance and popularity of the Xiaomi Mi 3, the Mi 4 was very widely anticipated.

The Xiaomi Mi 3 came out with a neat and clean design, classy package of hardware and a super quality unibody built, the easy on the pocket price tag, as well as a very good and highly responsive UI.

The Xiaomi Mi 4 has a similar designing as the Xiaomi Mi 3, including a 1080p display 5 inches in size and with IPS capabilities, though the glossy plastic back which is replaceable of course, is a twist, while we would call the addition of a metallic frame as a classy enhancement. The back covers come in various colors, designs and textures, thus offering more variety to the users, while the metallic frame adds a premium feeling from the Mi 4.

Xiaomi has packed the Mi 4 with the latest Qualcomm chipset, the Snapdragon 801, taking over from the Snapdragon 800, while also raising the RAM from 2 to 3GB, and adding Adreno 330 to the mix. The LTE, 4K recording and an 8MP front facer mean that Xiaomi has covered all the bases, and the MIUI v 5 that is in place on the Mi 4 means user experience will be good if not great. The MIUI can be upgraded to the MIUI v6, which is currently under testing and will be available soon.

The absence of the Gorilla Glass was a surprise, though we half expected the absence of expandable memory from the unibody smartphone. Still, we will have to go through our pace to check out the Xiaomi Mi 4 completely.

While unboxing the Xiaomi Mi 4, you will get just the basics, and in this line also, it has kept up with its tradition.

• Xiaomi Mi 4 handset
• An A/C adapter
• MicroUSB cable connector for A/C adapter for charging

The display on the Mi 4 is 5 inches in size and Full HD IPS, quite similar to the display on the Mi 3, comprising of 441 pixels per inch, which is very close to being the best. The resolution is 1080x1920 pixels, and the brightness level is also taken up a notch from the Mi 3 while keeping the good colors and contrast from the Mi 3 intact. The backlight, which was a bit uneven on the Mi 3 has also been made more uniform so that it provides a much better experience.

The images on the Xiaomi Mi 4 are much cooler than that on the Mi 3, though the color temperature and saturation options on the Mi 4 allow for this to be adjusted as per user liking. The sunlight legibility is improved thanks to the brightness improvement, and is much clearer outdoors, even in the extremely sunny conditions. The sensitivity on the display can be tweaked so that the screen can capture the touches while wearing gloves too, though it is wiser to keep this turned off to better utilize the battery when this is not required. There is another setting to keep the screen locked if the proximity sensor is covered, to cater to accidental unlocks – this setting can be turned off, as we feel this may have its impact on the battery life.

Xiaomi has revamped the original Mi 3 design, taking it up from the polycarbonate body to introduce a metallic frame, and the back is the polycarbonate plastic, but replaceable and slightly more difficult to remove. The back covers, just like Nokia, are available in a wide variety in the market, available in all sorts of colors, designs and textures, and will appeal to the wider audience which wants to customize their smartphones to their liking. The frame, though, still seems to be the highlight of this release, enhancing and accenting the design to a classy level.

The front is almost entirely covered by the 5 inch display, with the same standard layout, and the screen glass covering has not been specified, so we may safely assume that it is not Gorilla Glass. The design has curves in places of edges at the corners on the top and bottom, and that is improvement enough for us, though the glossy plastic back is a bit of a nuisance since it attracts smudges and fingerprints, while also adding slipperiness to the grip. If the back covers are even half as good as it is being said, we will still approve of the newer design, though for now, we are dubious when comparing with the Mi 3 in terms of the design. Still the metallic frame adds to the grip and the build gives a solid feel overall, with no squeaks, and is slightly more compact against its older version too.

The layout of the Xiaomi Mi 4 is also identically laid out as the Mi 3. The front of the Mi 4 is covered with glass with slightly reduced bezels, with the earpiece surrounded by the 8MP front snapper and sensors at the top of the display and the capacitive keys for Home, app switching and back below the display. The metal sides contain the microSIM slot on the right, which requires assistance of an ejector tool, and Power key and the volume rocker on the left side.

The top of the Mi 4 has the 3.5mm audio jack and IR blaster, which can be used by a number of apps to access home appliances like TVs, air conditions, media players etc. The bottom has a microUSB port and a large grille partially covering the loudspeaker and the primary microphone.

At the back is the 13MP 1800p main snapper assisted with the latest Sony sensors, with the LED flash next to it.

The back panel is removable, with the non-replaceable battery underneath. We are still missing the microSD slot since the memory is not expandable.

The Xiaomi Mi 4 comes with Android 4.4.2 Kit Kat, layered with the enhanced MIUI v5 – the MIUI ROMs are nothing new to the Android, and are already pretty well-known in inner Android circles. Incidentally, the MIUI v6 has already been announced, and Xiaomi will bring this out later this year – it promises updated system apps and flat looks among other improvements.

The lock screen of the Xiaomi Mi 4 resembles a lot with the lock screen of Huawei – the same option to move to any of four options, the simple unlock, camera, call log or messaging, while the controls change when media player is active. The home screen has shortcuts at the bottom, normally housing four, but can be raised up to five, while also able to be converted to folders. The home screen functions as the app drawer, housing all the app shortcuts on its unlimited home screens – the removal of any app will actually uninstall the app rather than just remove the shortcut. Widgets can be used, and can be added by tap and hold on the home screen – widgets are added with third party apps too. The home screen effects can be customized, and themes can be switched, which impacts the wallpaper, system icons, fonts, lock screen style, and sound profile. The search app is influenced by the iOS Spotlight search, and works similarly.

The notification area, instead of containing toggles in a separate window, keeps them in a separate tab to that of the notifications, thus making the notification area a two-tabbed display – the brightness meter is also moved to the toggles tab. Toggles can be managed and arranged, and this is the tab that opens as default unless there are any notifications available.

With the MIUI v5, there is another twist, that all the Google services have been replaced with Mi services, though the Google services can be re-applied by accessing the Mi Market app and downloading the Google services. The Mi Cloud is a new addition, providing 5GB storage space for all users, and backs up all the smartphone data including gallery, contacts, messages, logs, settings, notes, recordings, browser content and music library – inspired by the iCloud we doubt. There is an option to send messages over the internet rather than SMS. The Find Device function comes free of charge to all Mi Cloud accounts, and is very helpful if you are in the habit of forgetting your smartphone here and there. There is an assistant which can replace the Google Now, labeled Voice Assistant, and is close to Siri in functionality and UI, though currently only present in Chinese language at this time.

The dialer and phonebook are packed in one app, though accessed by different shortcuts, using the tabs for distinguishing. The Directory tab is another interesting app, listing different locations like clinics, hotels, hospitals, flight agencies among others. The painful thing at this time is that this feature currently works in China only. Xiaomi supports call recording, and call answer and reject can be set to respond automatically based on gestures too – even internet calling can be assigned gestures to work. There are more options too, like flipping the device to mute, lock automatically once slipped into pocket, mute all calls from unknown numbers among others.

Xiaomi has come out with the MIUI browser which is feature rich, improving synchronizing with Google account, browsing, downloads among others, as well as a dedicated Reading mode, absent in Chrome at this time. The speed of both the MIUI browser and Chrome are very fast, and we used both interchangeably. The MIUI browser, though, is mostly effective for light browsing, not for heavy testing, or opening too many tabs.

The Explorer app displays files in a categorized manner, though there is no document viewer / editor pre-installed on board – some option has to be downloaded from the Play Store, though this shouldn’t be a problem. The calendar, recorder, flashlight, notes, clock, calculator and weather apps are all standard. The Google Maps and Google Navigation are centric with Xiaomi Mi 4, and allows for easy commuting guidance and sight-seeing, providing additional help via the Street view and compass options.

Xiaomi Mi 4 has, in terms of most of the recent competition, below average sound quality and loudspeakers, and we fear you will have to be careful not to miss too many calls. This will especially be an issue in noisy environments.

The messaging is pretty standard, keeping threads managed – attachments convert it to MMS. The two email clients, one for Gmail and the other for other email addresses configuration is available with the Mi 4, which includes all the basic options.

The gallery for the Xiaomi Mi 4 links up the local and cloud images, with a standard album view that can segregate both. The image view screen has pretty standard options like setting as wallpapers, sharing, edit mode, delete or get more info. The image editor that is integrated with the gallery provides a rich feature list, from effects, tools ranging from cropping, mirroring, rotating, doodles, fisheye, straighten, frames among others, and light adjustments. Sharing utilizes all the connectivity features at its disposal, and is versatile.

The music player on the Xiaomi Mi 4 is a custom app with a simple interface, with a large visualization screen that also works as the Now Playing, below which, in four tabs, is the basic information for the audio file being played. There is online integration with Baidu also, which allows access to the large collection that Baidu has online, while online radio stations can be accessed for radio play. The player has a wide variety of visualizations, very cool and amazing, and many users will like these. Equalizers assist in tuning the audio to perfection, and has some presets for better performance. The MiSound enhancer comes into action when earphones are plugged in, and improves the quality of the sound considerably.

The Xiaomi Mi 4 has an FM radio, along with the option to record audio from radio – this was a first for us, and was interesting to use. A sleep timer built-in with the radio was new too.

The video player is simplistic in nature like its audio player counterpart, though it has a large amount of codecs at its disposal, though it could not seem to play WMV files. There is access to paid services here as well, same as the audio player, however, pop-up play and subtitles are unsupported.

Xiaomi Mi 3, after all its great features, managed to disappoint us with its audio output, and with the improvements put into the Mi 4, we were hoping to see a marked difference in this area too – however, Xiaomi managed to surprise us again by not looking at this area, still managing to put out an average audio output at best. The external amplifier connection was poor, with increased crosstalk and low audio level combining with deficient response of frequency. The frequency, actually a slight improvement from the Mi 3, shows reduction in distortion, though this is even lesser work than the tip of the iceberg, so to say. The same pattern continued on headphones connectivity, as usual with headphones on, crosstalk and distortion increases, and for Mi 4 to already have a fair share of both, this increase was a big leap.

Xiaomi has come out with the best hardware combo that is around in the market at this time, which is the Snapdragon 801 combined with the Adreno 330 and 3GB of RAM – though the Adreno still has overclocking problems, and so, heats up a bit when put under pressure. The 1080p display means that the Mi 4 will be a good challenger to the current crop of smartphones out there.

The CPU testing shows that the Mi 4 outperformed the Galaxy S5 and other notable competitors like the Xperia Z1 and Z2 easily to come in the top tier. The additional testing including GPU and RAM did decline the performance slightly but the Mi 4 still was comfortably placed in the list.

The single core performance was in the mix with the other Snapdragon 801 smartphones out there, and while the multi-core testing was slightly below the competition, it still was decently placed.

The heating problem though, did seem to have an impact on the performance, while the overheating made the grip uncomfortable too. It would be wise to be careful about the Xiaomi Mi 4 not getting a large number of apps open simultaneously, while also caring for the heating of the smartphone. Still, even with this little glitch, the Xiaomi Mi 4 does give an outstanding performance, with no problems whatsoever, and the MIUI layered over the original Android has a big part to play in this.

Xiaomi Mi 4 has a 13 MP main snapper with Sony sensors, a better pixel size and a wider aperture, one of the better combinations for a camera that we have seen around. The camera can snap up images at 4128 x 3096 pixels, and has autofocus, touch focus, face and smile detection, as well as the other generic features.

The camera UI is pretty simple with the layout off two side bars. The settings shortcut, shutter / recorder, and gallery buttons are on the right side, while the camera switcher, camera / camcorder switch and flash settings are on the left. The settings panel provides scenes, HDR, focus modes, exposure, white balance and ISO settings among others.

The camera provides pretty detailed images, with pinpoint color reproduction and mostly accurate white balance. There was some over sharpening that we found in very few places, but that was mostly hidden so the images were not ruined. The noise levels are on the higher side though, which is sometimes visible, and we didn’t like this little drawback. Still, with this issue included, we would still rate the camera as outstanding. The highlights and shadows, though, improve under the HDR mode.

Panorama mode provides 180 degree images, though processing takes a while, and while the stitching is great, due to the lower res and declined quality with slightly off-base exposure, the final output is not what we could call great, though it will do most of the times. Still, panoramas can be done in portrait and landscape modes.

The front facer is an 8MP snapper, which gives out great hi-resolution selfies, and is a big improvement from the front facer on the Xiaomi Mi 3. The level of detail is too good, and the colors are perfect – perhaps the best so far in the front facers. However, we would recommend not taking shots too close, as there was minor geometrical distortion on such snaps visible, though nothing too drastic.

The video recorder UI is almost identical to the snapper UI, and the relevant recording controls appear in place of camera controls. Slo-mo and time-lapse videos are supported with options to customize the intervals for snapping. Stabilization is present, which makes videos steadier and better, though the field of view gets reduced. Images can be captured during video recording too, at 6MP. Xiaomi Mi 4 records both 2160p and 1080p videos at 30fps, while the 4K recording takes the bitrate of 40Mbps, while audio in stereo quality is recorded at 96 Kbps. The FullHD takes the bitrate to 15Mbps with the same audio quality the slo-mo option for 720p is there too.

The quality of the video is very nice, with a lot of detail and almost non-existent noise, the colors are great too as is contrast. The 4K recordings, we thought were a bit soft, and didn’t compare with the 1080p recordings in terms of details and contrast, with white balance being a bit off too in places – we wouldn’t recommend using 4K videos too much on the Xiaomi Mi 4, though the 1080p are of excellent quality. HDR is available for both 1080p and 4K, which is the first time we have seen this option. Though the level of detail in shadows is improved, the videos do look a bit unnatural, and we wouldn’t use this option too frequently.

Xiaomi Mi 4 has LTE support in addition to the generic 3G and GSM connectivity, and also includes Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth 4.0, while containing GPS and GLONASS and an FM radio.

At the top, an IR blaster is present, which can control many home appliances which have the IR capability, though we could not find NFC, which is fast becoming a common connectivity option.

The microUSB 2.0 port functions three ways, mainly for charging, while covering connectivity with computer and OTG enabled, so that thumb drives can be connected directly. The Miracast protocol supports mirroring screens wirelessly.

Xiaomi Mi 4 has come out with a decent 3,080mAh battery, which we feel is sufficient enough for a smartphone carrying a display of such a size. The Mi 4 has an endurance rating of 68 hours, much higher than that of the recently released Samsung Galaxy Alpha, and much higher than a lot of the competition too – battery lasting close to 3 days seems a huge leap from the recent past, when we would be seeing smartphones that would barely last for one day. The talk time also gives out 18 hours, which is very good, though the browsing and video playback, giving out 9 and 7 hours respectively, let us down a bit, though the large screen size may be one of the reasons for this.

Apart from its improved user experience, and the other enhancements the Xiaomi Mi 4 has available, it does come with some shortcomings which are listed below:

• Storage cannot be expanded
• Available for purchase online only
• NFC is missing
• Non-replaceable battery
• Surprisingly, there is no Gorilla Glass covering

Classy smartphones, completely manufactured from China and providing good design aesthetics along with a ton of features is not something that we would say new in the industry by now. Still, the aggressiveness displayed by Xiaomi has us a bit surprised and somewhat happy, as we can understand their taking the competition seriously. While the number of additions to the Mi 3 are not a lot in terms of count, they still are made where they matter the most. With the introduction of 4K videos, 4G support, an improved hardware combo, improvement in the front facer, TV-out and the IR blaster are all changes that really do matter.

On top of all this is the super-fast UI of the Mi 4, containing the MIUI covering Android Kit Kat – and all of this is at a very affordable price. The build quality, an improved camera which was already very capable to start with, a decent battery and focus on every detail is what makes Xiaomi an instant hit.

The improvement in the sunlight legibility is something that will matter to a lot of users, though the same underwhelming audio quality may frustrate many users. Also, very welcome is the fact that the player supports almost all video codecs other than the WMV.

Still, we can look at the effort put in by Xiaomi into the Mi 4. The metallic frame is an enhancing and pleasing improvement, though with a lot of other smartphones introducing the same addition, it may not seem as pleasing anymore. The back cover too, the original one that comes with the Mi 4 is a bit uneasy on the grip and we didn’t like the quality too – additionally, it takes quite a lot of effort just to remove the back cover. We felt Xiaomi may have slightly been influenced by the design of the iPhone when planning the Mi 4.

Another area where we think Xiaomi could have upgraded was the memory expansion, but that was not to be. Some Xiaomi sets may also experience heating issues, so users will have to be especially careful in the summers. The Gorilla Glass was strangely another absentee that we didn’t expect from Xiaomi.

Still, with all the improvements and existing feature list, the price tag associated is a blessing in disguise. In the Mi 4, Xiaomi has created a smartphone that can compete with the highest level competition, and we will definitely say, a job well done. Xiaomi will definitely be a contender to the top slot and the likes of Samsung, HTC, Sony and others will do well to be wary of the inroads Xiaomi has made.