Xiaomi Mi 4 [First Impressions]

Xiaomi finally brought the Mi 4 today in India. The handset was announced last year somewhat in Q3 2014 and has been selling in China since then. Mi 4 is actually an iteration to Mi 3 which is the first Xiaomi smartphone to be sold in India. The smartphone launched here after almost 4 months later from the global launch.

Xiaomi Mi 4 is a Snapdragon 801 powered handset having a quad-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz. It features 3GB LPDDR3 RAM and 16GB eMMC 5.0 on-board storage which has 100% increase in reading speed while 50% in writing speed. The handset comes with 13MP f1.8 rear camera and 8MP f1.8 front-facing camera both having Sony stacked CMOS sensor.

The handset sports a 5-inch full HD IPS LCD 1080×1920 pixels resolution full laminated Corning One Glass Solution display manufactured by JDI. It is backed up by 3080 mAh Lithium-ion polymer battery with an astonishing build.

Talking about the build, Mi 4 flaunts a metallic frame which holds the circuit board and the display. The frame is very well designed with those chamfered edges in a process of 8 steps and one more which is sandblasting to give it that stainless steel fingerprint proof look. It has a non-removable back panel with an un-oridinary glossy shine as it contains grating pattern. The handset gives a perfect hold in hands considering the size is ergonomic.

Xiaomi has also brought the new MIUI 6 officially on Indian smartphones today along with Mi 4 just like they did with the announcement in China last summer. MIUI 6 features flat UI, loads of animations and improved elements adding more customizations. MIUI 6 will be coming to Mi 3 and Redmi Note 4G very soon, probably early February.

Xiaomi Mi 4 will be selling for ₹19,999 exclusively from Flipkart.com starting 10 February 2015 with registrations starting today. I personally kinda liked the smartphone with its first impressions but we shall discuss more details about the device in the full review soon.