Remember those days where we used to have super huge tank phones that can cost you a car in today’s standards, then smaller smartphones start appearing with more reasonable price tags, until the day where smartphones can be purchased with just a fraction of your income. Fast forward today, we have smartphones with 64-bit processors and the similar amount of storage and RAM that our PCs have, they can be made with plastic, metal or aluminum, manufacturers start selling their phones at a premium because they can. However, many of them start panicking when one smartphone brand goes international – Xiaomi. The company’s latest flagship Mi 4 crashed the market once again like the Mi 3 early this year, it was built with the strongest piece of steel, it has the most powerful hardware internals that time and it was dirt cheap – at RMB1999 (approx. RM1100).
Xiaomi Mi 4 Video Review
Xiaomi Mi 4 (China Unicom) Hardware Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz Quad-Core
RAM/ROM: 3GB/up to 64GB eMMC 5.0 flash
Display: 5″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) by JDI/Sharp
Camera: 13MP Sony Exmor f/1.8 (Main), 8MP Sony Exmor f/1.8 (Front)
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0 LE, IR Blaster
Networks: TD-LTE/DC-HSPA+/GSM
Battery: 3080 mAh
Beautiful, simply beautiful
We ‘ve always seen some Chinese phone makers having design similar to each other and most probably inspired by a very popular smartphone company. The Xiaomi Mi 4 was seriously accused of that of course, from pictures it actually resembles the iPhone a lot, until you see and pick up the device itself, you’ll definitely feel the difference.
The Mi 4’s body is built from a single piece of reinforced steel, even though it may not look all aluminum like the iPhone or theHTC One M8, it still looks extremely premium and elegant. Once you possess the Mi 4, you’ll start admiring the stainless steel frame over and over again, thanks to the special ‘edge coating’ on the frame, it has an extremely smooth polished surface that you will find lacking on similar devices using the same design construction.
The Mi 4’s design language isn’t adapted from some other phone makers as well, but rather from the Redmi family, it was a total design revamp from the Mi 3 and some may have preferred the older design as they feel it more premium looking. That doesn’t mean the Mi 4’s design is totally bad, despite having the same screen size as its predecessor, the phone now has a thinner bezel and thus causing a shorter form factor than the Mi 3, which makes one handed operation more manageable than ever.
The phone’s back cover is removable and exchangeable, Xiaomi has shown us some cases during its launch event back then and we were impressed with that smart idea. Sadly, while you are able to access the battery, you can’t remove and swap it.
The Xiaomi Mi 4 is an extremely well built smartphone with a stunning design, it doesn’t need to feature a full aluminum body to make it look good. At least, you don’t need to pay for a premium to enjoy a phone that has a reinforced steel body and we trust that you share the same love with us once you get hold of a Mi 4.
MIUI v6 isn’t innovative, but beautiful
If you have been a MIUI user or fan, the first impression that you will have is that MIUI looks like iOS in every way, it lacks an app drawer, you get pages of applications and widgets as your app list grows and even default apps look very similar to iOS. On MIUI v6, you may have the impression again that it bears resemblance to iOS 7, but once you dive deeper into the software, you will realize that MIUI v6 is far more interesting than iOS.
You still get most of the goodies back on MIUI v5 such as moving apps using multi touch and activating the flash light on the lock screen, MIUI v6 doesn’t really introduce new features to the user experience this time, but rather an overhaul on the visual experience to match the phone’s hardware, similar to how Apple has made iOS 7 for the iPhone 5s last year.
Apps such as dialer, mail, messages and music have also been visually overhauled. The music app for have a dynamic background which changes colors accordingly every time a different album art is being shown, you’ll also be able to navigate around to look at your current playlist or lyrics of the song, since the Mi 4 is running off a Chinese firmware, you get access to the Baidu online music service, which even allows downloading MP3 for free.
Probably the most interesting app of all is the Compass app, it activates the camera when you hold the phone in a portrait orientation and lets you pan around to look for directions, it does sound a little gimmicky but it is really a beautiful app.
MIUI v6 is still a developer ROM at this point of time, it feels a little resource heavy on the phone as we experienced transition lags and RAM utilization easily goes up to 80% most of the time, fortunately most of our apps ran reliably and we rarely encounter app crashes, it is also more reliable than MIUI v5. Fortunately, the software gets better with a weekly update from Xiaomi and we highly recommend that current Mi 4 users download the ROM from the MIUI forum.
High performance camera, disappointing low light performance
Xiaomi has maintained the phone’s main camera resolution at 13 megapixel, the camera sensor is now an upgraded Sony Exmor sensor with a huge f/1.8 aperture while the front facing camera also has the same specifications albeit with a lower 8 megapixel resolution.
In good lighting conditions, the camera’s fast 0.3ms autofocus speed is pretty impressive, exposure can be adjusted on the fly on the focus ring and it works well most of the time in brightly lit conditions. However, indoor and low light shots can be underwhelming with high noise levels and loss of detail, unless you want to mingle around with the camera’s manual settings but you certainly want to save that trouble when you are already having a good camera sensor onboard. Check out some of the samples below taken from the Mi 4’s camera. 
Having a high resolution front facing camera is certainly a requirement for flagship smartphones today, the Mi 4’s front camera fortunately doesn’t disappoint in taking wide angle shots however falls short similar to the main camera in taking low light photography.
The Mi 4 supports 4K video recording and it is the most impressive smartphone we’ve seen to date that takes high bitrate videos, the phone also records fast and slow motion and HDR videos, you can check them out down below.
Benchmarks, Battery Life and Network Quality
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The Mi 4 is the highest performing Snapdragon 801 device that we’ve seen to date in benchmarks, of course one could always argue that Xiaomi has purposely made the phone perform its optimal speed on benchmark apps, we won’t deny that and can conclude real world performance isn’t really impressive. Try the HTC One M8 then the Mi 4, you’ll know what we mean here.
On the bright side, battery life is good on the Mi 4 as you’ll be getting a full working day or slightly more on a full charge with medium to heavy weight usage such as receiving group text messages, music streaming, some phone calls and video streaming, the screen is obviously consuming the most power so make sure you have auto brightness enabled. Despite using a China Unicom variant of the Mi 4, network quality is exceptionally good on the Maxis and Celcom network, voice calls are clear on both sides and the phone performs brilliantly over a HSPA+ data connection.
Verdict – The Best Xiaomi Smartphone ever made
Undeniably, the Xiaomi Mi 4 is the most beautiful and powerful smartphone that the Chinese company has ever attempted, but if it were to compete with some of its major competitors out there, Xiaomi still has a lot to catch up in terms of features and hardware. The Mi 4’s only advantage would be pricing, which still poses a threat to many established smartphone makers, the company has recently grown to the No. 3 smartphone maker globally even without getting out of Asia, if Xiaomi could’ve put more effort in introducing a much more innovative software experience on the Mi 4, make it work well with its entire hardware ecosystem like its Mi Router, Mi TV 2 and Mi Pad, the company could easily take the Apple of Android crown. The Mi 4 FDD-LTE variant will be introduced to the Malaysian market later this year and we hope for a price reduction since the phone’s hardware are starting to get dated.
The Good:
+ Solid build construction
+ Beautiful and bright display
+ Decent battery life
+ Fast camera performance
+ Beautiful and customizable software
The Not so Good:
– MIUI v6 takes up hardware resources
– Camera underperforms in low light
– No NFC
– Non-removable battery though accessible
Based on the scores we gave above, the Xiaomi Mi 4 gets an 8.2 out of 10 from the average score.
